


O Golden Sun (melt the wax from my wings)

by magnificent



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Courtship, Dubious Consent Fantasy, Historical Inaccuracy, Humiliation, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poor Javert, Slow Burn, Whump, Wingfic, dubious consent within a dream
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-05 03:25:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17317169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificent/pseuds/magnificent
Summary: The first time you fall in love, your wings come in. They cannot form due to passing fancy or mere infatuation; it must be a deep and steadfast love that is nurtured and fed over time. Wings cannot grow by chance or accident—and so it is to Javert’s great horror that his wings begin to grow during Toulon.





	1. Toulon

The first time he touches Jean Valjean, it is a mistake.

He is giving lashes—quietly furious with the man for fighting and increasing his sentence by six more months—angry and yet vindicated in his beliefs that the  _ bagne  _ is the only place for these beasts—and raw stripes of red well up after each crack of the whip. Valjean’s wings are pulled up and shuddering, drawn away from the point of impact, as every prisoner soon learns that it is much less painful for the whip to lick bare skin than feathers.

The last blow falls, and Javert lets silence hold for a brief moment, listening to the animalistic groaning and panting as the convict tries to simultaneously catch his breath and hold back tears. Disgust fills his throat at the sight: a grown man, crying like a child, shaking as if  _ he  _ has the one been wronged, and not the prisoner Valjean had quarreled with and beaten.

He drops the whip upon the nearby bench for cleaning, and steps forward, impatient for the completion of this sordid task.

“24601,” he says, “You have paid your dues. This is the punishment for fighting; you will not do it again.”

Valjean does not speak, only keeps his face towards the wall. Scarred and powerful hands tremble in the manacles that pin him to the rack.

Javert sighs and frees him to return to his duties, and as he turns away, his shoulder brushes against something long and sturdy; Valjean, beginning to retract his wings, had caught against him. A frisson of something nameless and electric and searing runs alongside them both; he sees the discomfort in Valjean’s face and is certain that it is mirrored in his own.

Neither of them says a word. Javert escorts the convict back in silence.

 

* * *

 

But after that single unwelcome point of contact, Javert finds himself changed in the most terrible of ways: he has found, quite reluctantly, that he has taken notice of Jean Valjean’s wings.

He has never paid them notice before—in a sea of prisoners, it is more unusual to see a man without a pair at all. Wings tend to grow in so early, after all, before a criminal has time to be caught and sentenced to hard labor; they might form as early as seven or eight years old as the first blossoming of a child’s pure love for a dear playmate or companion; more often they emerge with vigor during the years of youth, as maidens blossom into young women and boys turn into men.

Javert has never found himself appreciating the feathers of a beautiful lady; his eyes, when drawn to a back, tend to linger more often on that of an older man, if at all, and more tellingly, he has never once imagined what it might be like to have his own grow in, if they ever will. His examination is never that of interest, and he ignores the automatic classifications that his mother had taught him so many years ago:  _ white for a child’s pure love; tawny gold for tenderness; brown for warmth.  _ Black, brown, or gray bars across the tops signify loyalty or steadfastness; dark flecking along the edges of feathers hints at darker passions: jealousy, lust, possessiveness. Mottled feathers may be a sign of sporadic emotion, or mixed feelings: a reluctant love, perhaps, or one with volatile emotion.

So if Javert’s eyes linger on a set of wings, it is to search for indication of personality, and nothing more.

And yet… Javert finds his eyes searching the backs of the prisoners, and stilling when they fall upon the broad and golden pinions of Prisoner 24601. They are larger than most, (which, if the experts are to be believed, have more to do with the depth of a person’s first love than their body mass) and stronger. Javert had thought to himself that every part of Jean Valjean could be used as a weapon, even appendages grown from love itself, and he is proven correct; despite all taboos against the unveiling of wings, these convicts are beasts. Valjean uses them in his labors, using them to support the loads he is made to carry, to shield his face from the rain.

Several months later, there is another fight, and Valjean wades into it with all the unrestrained fury and exultation of a berserker. He wields his wings like weapons though they should be fragile. Examination of prisoner’s injuries after the riot shows that his wings are as strong as a man’s arms—he could not have caused such grievous injuries otherwise. One of the men is transferred to another prison because he has been so badly harmed.

Javert finds himself wanting to touch the convict’s powerful limbs again. With his hands, this time, not against the clothed slope of his shoulder. Wants to feel their strength—wants—wants— _ needs _ —to feel them wrap around him.

The instant he thinks this, his face flushes dark and he is in a foul mood for the rest of the day, taking out his fury and self-disgust upon the prisoners, who pull away from him as though repulsed by a magnetic force.

(That night, he pulls his blankets tightly around his shoulders and tells himself, no, he is not pretending them to be muscles bound in golden feathers.)

(He sleeps in that cocoon for the rest of the night, better than he ought to.)

 

* * *

 

 

He watches, years later, when Valjean is shackled to another prisoner. Younger than them both, little more than a boy, without any wings at all. The boy is instantly set upon, and teased, and beaten, and degraded. But Valjean is there when he falters; he bears his burdens, performs the other’s share of labor.

When the cudgels fall upon him, Valjean appears to react instinctively; that powerful, broad wing snaps out between them and the boy, a golden shield.

Javert watches from the wall, and even from such a great distance, he hears the  _ snap  _ of the wingbone breaking under the blows of the guardsmen’s cudgels.

 

* * *

 

He knows it is wrong, and foolish, and very likely an abuse of authority, but when Valjean is admitted to the infirmary for treatment, Javert is already present and waiting.

“Take care of the other inmates,” Javert tells the  _ bagne  _ doctor, daring him silently to refuse. “This man is dangerous. I will handle his treatment.”

There is no argument; after all, who would possibly volunteer to wrap a wing injury? To touch another’s wing is to bear an intimacy greater than intercourse; to care for the wing of a convict would be crass and unseemly. It is just as uncomfortable for a doctor as it is for a patient.

And yet Javert desires it.

Desires it! Regardless of the fact that these wings were grown for another; the very representation of Jean Valjean’s first love, the outward signal that says, “I am one who has a heart.”

And Javert wonders about this, too, because the prisoner he knows is cold and bloodthirsty, bitter and cruel.

The wings, though… the wings are different. They are strong and certain, and helpful, and protective. Wings cannot be used as most limbs, and indeed, they often move without conscious thought. Javert finds himself fascinated with a man whose wings are free and bold, which threaten and assure in equal measure.

Valjean’s eyes are sullen when Javert steps past the bedcurtain and towards his cot. He fumbles at the sight of one golden-feathered limb sagging, lewdly spread across the sheets. Deep gold on pure white linens. He focuses his attention on the bandages in his hand to calm his nerves and distract him from the sudden burst of lust.

“Steady,” Javert says as much to Valjean as to himself, and probes the appendage for the break. He is thankful for Valjean’s cry of pain because it masks his own surprised exhalation. The feathers are warmer than he had expected, and the skin beneath, far softer.

It is entirely an alien feeling. He has picked up bird feathers once or twice before, but never has he touched the wings of a man. Valjean’s wing is broken near the end, dangling loose and useless; easily splinted, fortunately, because Javert finds that his hands are shaking.

He wraps the bandages tightly enough that Valjean hisses. Feathers crumple beneath the cloth in his haste. He dismisses Valjean too soon, and barely notices the other man’s glare.

He leaves a few feathers on the cot: two tiny bits of down, and one mangled golden flight feather. The latter is bisected with the wide black bar that Valjean proudly displays across his shoulders.

Javert takes it in hand out of morbid curiosity. It is still warm from Valjean’s skin; he twirls it in his fingers, watching the light glitter of the black bar. It seems even darker, pulled from the prisoner’s flesh; he thinks about the width, and the pigment; it is the color of jet, and by the size of the bar one would presume that Valjean must have been very devoted to his first love indeed, for the unyielding line of loyalty to be branded so darkly and clearly.

He asks no one in particular why Valjean must be devoted to a person and not to the law.

Javert has never been a thief, but he steals the feather from the bedsheets and sweeps the down into the trash.

 

* * *

 

 

Three nights later, Javert awakens in a night sweat, feverish and ill. His skin crawls. Something is terribly wrong with him, an instinct deep within him alerting him to a sense of  _ wrongness  _ swiftly overtaking him.

He is sick in his chamberpot, and dumps the vomit when he recovers moments later. His nightshirt sticks to him uncomfortably. He ignores the sensation and forces himself back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Valjean and the boy remain chained together, and he appears to like the boy’s company. They keep each other out of trouble, which appeases the other guards save for Javert, who cannot fight down an inexplicable anxiety about their close companionship. Valjean smiles more frequently around him, and on several occasions, he even laughs. Javert curses the boy, then, for having heard the sound directly from the man’s lips; curses him as he himself stands many yards away and listens keenly for the faint sound of a warm, deep chuckle.

He is vindictively pleased when the boy falls ill that winter, and dies. When the body is buried, two little stumps are discovered, beginning to emerge from his back.

 

* * *

 

 

His back itches incessantly.

 

* * *

 

 

Valjean stops smiling, and this enrages Javert more than anything else. It is far more intolerable to see his face return to grim stoicism, lined and weary. Javert thought he had hated the boy before, but it is nothing compared to this new fury—low and seething, that a boy would cheer Valjean so and then allow himself to be taken by death.

 

* * *

 

 

Towards the end of the year, Javert oversees the prisoners constructing a ship in its entirety, from the ground up. Normally their labors are focused upon repairs; it is intensive and difficult and back-breaking work for the sake of the French Empire. Javert takes pride in being a part of France’s victories, and therefore never allows prisoners to put forth substandard work.

This is a different matter. They have their instructions, and they have craftsmen to guide them as they call out orders to the prisoners; only the strongest men were called for this project. It is difficult and dangerous work, as the sides are put into place and sealed with pitch. They must work close to the frigid waters as well, and if any man falls into the sea, it is a death sentence: not even the healthiest of men can withstand the icy chill of the ocean’s embrace in December.

The men work until their hands are chapped and bleeding. Many are harmed by the bubbling pitch as well, their skin searing if drops hit their skin. Some of them break fingers trying to slot boards into place. Near the end of the project, another dies by falling from the deck.

Five days before the ship is to be complete, Javert is ordered below decks to oversee the transportation of supplies. They are to be brought in on carts, stacked, and tied together so that when the ship is upon the waves, the supplies do not shift and become damaged.

About two hours through his shift, there is a loud snap, and a shout, and the sound of groaning timber; Javert is ready with a hand on his whip and a chastisement forming on his lips, but is unprepared for the sight of a leaning pallet, stacked too high and unbound, with the top row of crates beginning to slide towards him.

He is not a man easily surprised; his instincts are good and supplemented by quick reflexes. He is just about to step back when the crates teeter and fall; and he would have likely gotten out of the way except that a broad hand clasps the front of his jacket and drags him forwards, directly into the path of the falling crates.

He thinks,  _ this is it, I will die, I will have been murdered by convicts within the line of duty  _ and finds himself strangely serene before closing his eyes.

There is a terrible clatter and another shout and a loud grunt of pain that does not belong to Javert.

And then there is silence.

He opens his eyes to find Valjean’s face tight with pain, only inches away. Just past the prisoner's shoulder, Javert can see the rough-hewn edge of a crate; the entire pallet has collapsed upon them both.

Javert flinches at the sensation of hot breath over his mouth, the foul scent of a big and unwashed body covering his own, many pounds of muscle pressing down upon him from heel to breast. He looks up at his savior in amazement, and realizes that the convict is adorned with a halo of gold.

Valjean’s wings are open. They are far, far larger fully extended, he thinks numbly, enough that he could wrap himself in them several times over. And beautiful, unending sheets of aged gold, vibrant and shimmering and—

“That,” Valjean grunts, “was foolish.”

Javert pulls his eyes from the arched wingtips over Valjean’s head, and fixes them upon his face instead. The convict looks at him with such derision and anger, as if Javert were some particularly dull creature in need of training. “Indeed it was. I wouldn’t have fallen at all if you hadn’t  _ pulled me down beneath the crates.” _

“You were too slow,” Valjean admonishes, and Javert shudders to feel the vocalizations forming within his body, the deep rumble that travels up from the hard and muscular belly and the vibrations low in his throat. He  _ feels  _ Valjean speaking more clearly than he hears him. They are pressed together indecently. “You would not have made it in time. I did what I could.”

Javert grits his teeth. “And you have Toulon’s thanks for saving a servant of the law. Now could you please stand?”

Valjean pauses. “I cannot. I… may have broken something.”

Javert glances around wildly for any of the other convicts; the deck had at least three other men on it before the crates fell; now the entire ship is suspiciously silent.

He sighs and lets his head fall back against the floor. “This was an escape attempt, wasn’t it.”

“I didn’t realize you would be the guard on duty.”

It sounds strangely like an apology, and Javert squints for a moment before deciding that he’d rather not press for more information. “Then we are trapped.”

“I am afraid so.”

Javert closes his eyes again rather than keep looking at Valjean, and instead is made to focus on damp breath against his whiskers and mouth and neck: too warm, too soft. His skin prickles. “What do you think is broken?”

“Only my leg, hopefully.”

“Are you able to feel your legs at all?”

“Yes.”

“Then at least it is not your back.”

“I didn’t expect compassion from a guard.”

“You are mistaken,” Javert snaps. “If you cannot work, you cannot pay back your debts to society.”

There is a low chuckle breathed out against his neck, and Javert nearly wrenches every bone out of socket from the flinch that overtakes him at the sensation. He has not heard Valjean laugh since the boy’s death, and never this close. He thinks about the little stumps of flesh found on the corpse, just below the shoulderblades. He is beginning to think he knows why the boy grew them.

“Of course, Javert. I never should have mistaken you for a compassionate man.”

He jerks in surprise. He meets Valjean’s gaze again, by accident, but can’t seem to look away. “I… didn’t realize you knew me by name.”

“It’s been nearly fifteen years,” the prisoner answers. “Faces become familiar, given enough time.”

“And enough of the scars on your back are by my hand,” Javert says. “I should not have been surprised.”

Valjean says nothing.

They lay in silence for long moments. Javert hears a shout outside, off the ship, and then nothing. He wonders how much time might pass before they are discovered. Perhaps, if left for too long, Valjean will realize what a terrible mistake he made in trying to save Javert, and will kill him instead.

Although that would leave him trapped with a corpse. Maybe Valjean wouldn’t mind. He might take some sort of pleasure in watching Javert grow pale beneath him, knowing that his own massive hands are the cause of his tormentor’s death. He would have ample time to savor his victory before his beating, and subsequent execution.

“Why did you step in front of me?” The question has left him before he can think better of it.

Under the weight of the crates crushing their bodies together, Valjean still finds the strength to shrug. The tops of his wings flex around Javert’s face distractingly. “Don’t know. I didn’t think about it.”

He scoffs, trying to hide his blush. “And yet you called me foolish. You seem to have a habit of putting yourself in harm’s way.”

Valjean looks at him then, peering down at his face; Javert wishes he could be anywhere else, but if not even Valjean can move the crates away, then there is no helping it.

“You’re talking about Abélard. That time when they were beating him, and I took his punishment.”

“The boy, yes.” And once again, before he can catch himself, he asks, “Did you do that without thinking, too?”

Deliberately, Valjean looks side to side at his open wings, stretched wide in the ultimate gesture of protection: pinned to the floor by crates, feathers bloodied and crushed. “It is as you said. I have made a habit of it.”

Javert fidgets, feeling just as vulnerable as Valjean must also feel, although he does not seem at all discomfited by his most intimate appendages draped open and ruined on the floor. “Are… they… broken again, as well?”

“I would not be speaking to you if they were,” he says, and explains, “Wings are so sensitive. Any kind of injury is incredibly painful.”

“I see.”

“Worse than a punch to the groin.”

“Hm.”

“Of course, a limb’s sensitivity makes it that much more pleasurable when stroked.”

Javert blushes and fixes his eyes upon the ceiling. “Please stop talking about your wings while they’re open inches away from my face.”

“I wasn’t speaking of my wings; I was speaking of my groin.”

_ “Neither  _ of those, Valjean.”

Two beats of silence. Javert cringes, and very purposefully looks anywhere other than the man’s face. He can imagine the smug expression spreading across his face, though.

“So it is not only myself who knows your name; the reverse is true as well.”

“It’s been nearly fifteen years,” he reminds, echoing Valjean’s earlier words.

“So it has.”

Javert squirms again. He is trying to make himself marginally more comfortable, seeking a position beneath Valjean’s hard and sweaty body that is not so very intimate; it was shockingly pleasant at first, to be pressed against trembling and chiseled muscle, to have the air knocked out of him under the immense weight of the crates atop their bodies; but he is realizing that the hard edge of one of the crates must be digging into his hip, because—

Unless it is not a crate.

Javert closes his eyes briefly and tries for patience. Clearly, there must be a God, for the heavens have conspired to put him into the very worst position possible.

“Valjean,” he says, trying for sternness, but it comes out hoarse.

He is pinned underneath a mountain of crates, all save one of his prisoners have escaped, and the latter is currently aroused and hard against him. The pressure against his hip jerks slightly, in reaction to his spoken name.

“Javert,” Valjean growls, and good  _ god  _ his voice is sinful. The convict’s hips rock forward, just the once, a small enough amount that it could be called an accident. Javert knows better.

He is blushing. He  _ knows  _ he is blushing, and he finds himself completely incapable of stopping. And so he blurts, “The boy. Abélard.”

“What of him?”

“He did not last long.”

“Boys that young rarely do,” Valjean says, humoring his line of questioning. He nuzzles his face along Javert’s neck, who bites his tongue to keep from crying out.

“He was enamored with you,” Javert manages.

Valjean sighs. “And?”

“You protected him. You… enjoyed his company.”

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Valjean says, and at this he finally sounds angry. “I loved him like a son. I may be a prisoner of the  _ bagne,  _ but I am not a beast.”

Javert scoffs, grasping at the rise of emotion. Anything to seek to pull Valjean’s attention away from the interest between them. If he can distract Valjean, then the other man will hopefully miss Javert’s own stirring attraction. And speaking of a dead man will do wonders for destroying the atmosphere surrounding them both. “You mean to tell me that you were chained to that boy for that many months, and did not act upon your own base desires once?”

_ “Never.” _

“I understand,” Javert says, “I have had it entirely wrong. Perhaps instead, you desired for him to take you instead—after all, you’ve spread your wings for at least two men so far. Why not your legs as well?”

Valjean lets out a snarl of rage.

“You must have been so disappointed when he passed; you would have to work to find yet another man desperate enough to fuck your used-up hole. Did you plan this, the crates falling atop me? Were you so eager to have me pinned?” Javert presses on, baring his teeth at Valjean’s furious expression. “That boy might have been willing, but I would never. When he died. He was growing wings for you. That is the only way a man could possibly want to lay with a beast like yourself.”

Finally,  _ finally,  _ at this, Valjean makes a low noise of grief and rage, and his eyes are once again glittering with hurt and anger, not amusement and lust. He presses his face against Javert’s neck once more so that they do not have to look upon each other. More importantly, the hardness against his hip has abated, so Javert is free to relax.

He does not know what he feels so guilty. Valjean’s body is pliant against him, and after Javert’s needling, neither of them are aroused. He won’t be able to take advantage of a prisoner’s misguided lust; he won’t be breaking regulation by simply waiting.

But, god! To see Valjean’s face filled with pain! Javert wishes there had been other words available. Could he have stopped Valjean had he continued to thrust against Javert’s hips—could he have stopped himself? Would his excuses have been heeded?

Whatever rapport they had built from the time that the crates fell is extinguished. In its place lies bitter ashes. Javert, still consoled by the warmth of the heavy body atop him, acknowledges this, and cannot fault himself. Even if Valjean had listened, even if they had not reached completion with each other, Valjean would have known of Javert’s iniquity. It would have ruined them both.

Far better to destroy something before it has begun.

They do not speak for another thirty minutes, until they are rescued by the other guards. Valjean’s leg is checked over and found to be sprained, not fractured, but his powerful wings are mangled by the crates and dripping with blood from broken feathers.

When they leave the ship, the floor is splattered with it, and amidst the blood are a scant few clips of gold from Valjean’s feathers: rare and covetous, like a handful of coins scattered across the rough-hewn boards.

Spring arrives wet and warm in 1811, and Javert although it will never be a matter worthy of the history books, he feels that somewhere it should be recorded that this very year is the one that proves to him that Fate is real. And Fate must also be petty and cruel, because otherwise his life would never have become…  _ this. _

It is on one of these wet spring days, as Javert slips on his shirt and stock, that he notices a peculiar pressure on his back. He pauses before the mirror in his sparse, cheerless room, and slips the shirt back down until it hits the floor, dropped by nerveless fingers.

The line of his back is marred by the appearance of two naked stumps.

It is at once the most hideous and dear thing that Javert has ever seen, and hates himself all the more for the burst of joy within his breast that wars with horror. Because, of course, a man may lie to himself about his own feelings, may tell himself repeatedly that he does not experience a certain lightness when reminiscing about another; that he is not pleased to see a secretly beloved countenance; that his heart does not lift when spoken to by his dearest.

But when the wings appear, the lies must cease.

Javert has fallen in love for the first time, and he has fallen for Jean Valjean.

 

* * *

 

 

He is entirely distracted that first day. He has not spoken to Valjean since the ship incident, but his eyes follow the other ceaselessly. He cannot help but ask himself—had the crates not fallen, had Valjean not tried to protect him, would his wings still have grown? He cannot say. Can they be formed due to one incident alone? Would they have developed regardless, or was that time spent pressed against the other man all his body needed to bloom?

Javert thinks it must be so, because he hasn’t spent much time at all with the other man. They haven’t had a single conversation since that winter day, and already several months have passed.

He watches, mouth going dry, as Valjean hefts a particularly heavy load. Javert’s wings, at first unnoticed but likely a few days or perhaps a week old by this point, shift against his back once or twice without volition, like the fluttering movements of a babe in the womb. Had Javert not been hyperaware of the emerging appendages, he likely would not have noticed. Instead, they burn against his flesh like a brand.

Javert wants to ignore them, and makes a valiant attempt to continue to lie to himself about their existence.

He stops, when, another week later, he risks a glance in the mirror to discover that they have tripled in size, and worst of all, the feathers are coming in black—the color of guilt.

Something must be done.

Using some of his largely-untouched earnings from his position at the  _ bagne, _ he purchases a length of cloth and takes to wrapping his wings fast to his skin in hopes that the constriction will stunt their growth.

Perhaps he does not tie the cloth tightly enough, because the wings continue to itch and flex intermittently against his back, and in another two months they are too large to be hidden at all; if Javert continues to wrap them, he will risk breaking them.

He should not be as horrified at the prospects of his own broken wings as he is. He is thirty-two years old now; he has gone a lifetime without wings, and has gained them so late that some may argue he might as well not have gained them at all. But they are precious to him now, these great ugly black wings, dark as sin, ungainly and inelegant and unpleasant.

He is not afraid of what people will think when they look at him. Black wings are nearly unheard of; darkness usually indicates something foul. They will assume things that are untrue: they will guess upon the circumstances of his coloration.

_ Look at that man,  _ he imagines passerby will say,  _ look at his wings. Did he fall in love with a married woman? Was his first love sickly and dying? Is that sheet of darkness stained with guilt, or grief? _

But it does not matter what they think, because the truth is far worse.

Javert resigns himself to his fate, and on his next day off work, he goes to the tailor’s to have new waistcoats fitted and his shirts adjusted. He is greeted with knowing glances and pleased smiles when he announces the reason for his patronship, and is shown a wide variety of styles that he might request for the alteration of his shirts.

He ignores the lovely pearl buttoned variety with buttons so fine and small they require hooks to be fastened; he would not want to bother with such a ridiculous expenditure for all the time it would take each morning to dress. He settles on the fitted shirts with lacing that will allow him to keep wearing the same shirt no matter how large his wings grow. The lacing is simple and unassuming, and if they require a larger opening to fit through, he will only need to pull the ribbons out down to the next hole.

“Then they are still coming in, Monsieur?” the tailor asks with a smile. “You have my congratulations, and my thanks for your patronage. Now, as far as the waistcoat and overcoat goes…”

“I will purchase an overcoat from off the rack,” Javert interrupts. “I am not a man of means.”

“Just the waistcoat then,” the tailor confirms, and gestures at his clothing. “May I take your measurements?”

“I… yes,” he says, and removes his waistcoat at the tailor’s prompting.

“I will have my seamstress take down the measurements for this, while I concern myself with the measurements respective to your wings.”

Javert stiffens. “Surely that is unnecessary.”

The tailor chuckles. “Monsieur, I promise you that I have seen many bodies, nude and otherwise. It may be intrusive, but your fit will be greatly impaired if I cannot take a proper measurement.”

“They are still growing,” Javert defends. “What if your fit is too tight? No, Monsieur, I will take the waistcoat in the same laced style as the shirts.”

“Then I will not touch them,” the tailor says, “but at least allow me to see them for an estimation.”

Javert has run out of excuses, and so he removes his shirt without a word. He keeps his face turned away but watches the tailor’s expression in the mirror.

To his credit, the other man’s brow furrows for a moment as he takes in the sight: unusually large, tips extending all the way to the small of his waist. They are much longer than the tailor’s own gray wings, folded neatly—six inches at most, whereas Javert’s are around ten inches longer still. Even without them being fully black, their size alone would be memorable; their shade included, they are anomalous. But the tailor says nothing, only glances up and down along the slope of Javert’s back, and then allows him to pull up his shirt once more.

“Your shirts and waistcoat will be ready in a week’s time,” the tailor says, and graciously bids him farewell after Javert purchases an overcoat to accommodate his new appendages.

 

* * *

 

 

Unfortunately, the size of his wings also means that he must request a change in uniform. His jacket is exchanged for one with brass buttons lining the back and a sewn-in half-cape to protect his wings from the elements.

Javert is loathe to wear it. He has yet to appear in public with them visible; so far the only other person to see them has been his tailor. If he steps out in his new clothing, everyone will know that beneath the stony expression and unattractive features is a heart of weakness. His safety amongst the prisoners will be compromised. If he is not careful, an inmate might try to pull out his feathers as he passes.

And… amongst those prisoners… Valjean will see them too. He will never know that he is the cause for their appearance, but he will see them.

At the thought, the wings tremble and lift, before closing more tightly against his back.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time he returns to the  _ bagne  _ for his shift, he  _ aches.  _ His wings are growing in so quickly now that the bone and sinew and skin are developing faster than his feathers can grow to cover them. He had heard about the notorious growing pains of wings, and could only imagine the difficulty that a man with unusually large wings, such as Valjean, must have had, and now he is forced to experience it himself.

They are hideous: patchy, limp, and weak. Had Javert had the faintest desire to Display himself before Valjean, he would have wept in despair; even so, he shudders while he dons his uniform and thanks God that the half-cape covers the worst of the bald skin. He can hardly move them to dress himself, and in fact is forced to prop them up with hands at one point. The effort it takes to keep them against his back leaves his muscles trembling, and he is glad he arrived to work early enough to be able to sit for a time before he must report for duty.

He had hoped, that with the dark blue of his uniform, that his wings might blend in and remain unnoticed. Of course he is not that lucky.

_“Bonne journée,_ Javert,” one of the guards calls, and then his eyes fall to the cape, and lower to black feathers brushing against his waist. “By God!”

After that, the entire  _ bagne  _ is aware. He is assaulted with questions, jibes, and comments from prisoners and guardsmen alike:  _ Who is she? It must be a very beautiful woman to have captured the heart of Javert! Did you Display them for her? I wonder why they’re black… I can’t believe their size! Javert is only human, after all. _

And, a less friendly undertone,  _ Disgusting. Foul Gypsy bastard. Looks like Javert’s coal-black heart could grow coal-black feathers; is anyone surprised? _

_ But,  _ a tiny part of him protests, silent and unheeded,  _ they are not coal-black. They are black as jet—full and dark like the bar across Valjean’s golden wings. _

Valjean sees them, too. Javert is watching very carefully, when he passes by. Dismissive eyes flick over him, once, and linger on a naked portion of light brown skin where the feathers are still sparse.

“Congratulations,” he says, coldly.

This is their last positive interaction.

After his wings appear, everything changes. It is as if a switch has flipped, and as Javert had feared, the prisoners lose all respect for him. His feathers are snatched at and stolen, making him cry out with pain; Valjean was right. It is, indeed, incredibly painful. It is a sensation not unlike his heart tearing out with his flesh.

Valjean may have protected him once before, but since the ship, he refuses to make any attempt at helping Javert. He watches with grim satisfaction as Javert is mocked and tripped; the other guards do their best to help him, since he has been loyal and steadfast for so many years, but it isn’t enough.

Javert attends his yearly review with a split lip. The warden looks at him sharply but does not comment.

The physical pain is not the worst of his problems, however; he must constantly fight his body’s own demands to Display for Valjean. Every time he sees the other, his muscles twitch; a few times he catches his back trembling with effort to keep his wings modestly closed. They are unfamiliar; like a cat’s tail, they seem to move without his consent. He begins to understand what Valjean had spoken of, that his wings would do what they wished—that it is difficult to keep control of them.

It is a battle of wills. To Display for a prisoner would ruin him, and yet he thinks that it would be a great mercy to let them slide open, if only to end this relentless war upon his own body.

Meanwhile, the damned appendages continue to grow. Within another month, his wingspan surpasses Valjean’s; he finds that he can no longer sit down with his wings folded. Instead, he must risk impropriety by lifting them and holding them tight against his sides. It is incredibly uncomfortable. He stops taking coaches so that he can avoid the awkward posture.

Everything has changed; not only sitting, but his every movement is conscious of the abnormal growths weighing down his back. He walks differently to avoid hitting his wings with the backs of his legs; he stops sleeping on his back. He can no longer kneel in the same way; his wings must either be pushed up, or he must straighten his back before crouching.

By the middle of the summer, they have finally slowed their growth. The tips of his pinions brush his calves as he walks. He has never seen another man or woman with wings his size, and yet they continue to grow. They should have been filled with glossy black feathers, but instead they are still dotted with bald patches where prisoners have torn them out by the fistful.

Javert becomes accustomed to pain. There is never a part of him that does not ache, whether it’s the wounds on his back, slowly dripping blood onto the docks—his face from being struck—twinging ribs and bruised shins and tired eyes.

He is worn down slowly. He no longer has the energy to shave every day. He comes to work and finds himself wishing he could be back in his bed. He is more easily chilled; the spray of the sea splashing upon his legs and coat is freezing when before he had considered it refreshing. After six months of constant degradation and looking behind his back for the hordes of wild-eyed prisoners breathing down his neck, his reflexes have slowed. 

Javert fools himself into thinking it doesn’t matter; perhaps it is only that he doesn’t think at all anymore.

One late evening as he makes his rounds, he notices an irregularity: Paquin, the guard on duty outside the prisoner’s sleeping quarters, is sitting by the door, head bowed.

“Paquin,” Javert hisses, striding forward. “Wake up!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a flash of movement. He doesn’t move quickly enough—dirty, pitch-stained hands grasp at his clothing and pull him against the wall. He lets out a shout and in his flailing to escape, his boot knocks into Paquin’s shoulder. The other man slumps, and Javert finally,  _ finally  _ notices the poorly-disguised puddle of blood, and the shiv sticking out of his fellow guard’s back.

_ This is it, then,  _ he thinks despairingly.  _ I am going to die. The prisoners have escaped, and I was too fool to notice the uprising. _

Javert is clapped in irons by a pair of leering, toothless old men, and dragged out to the yard. Half the prison appears to be there, all prisoners mingling freely, a scant few guards on their knees with heads bowed and hands chained. He glances towards the empty watchtower and curses. How did this happen? Fifteen years, and there has never been a revolt of this scale. Dead guards, honest men in chains—righteousness and justice has been overturned. Javert is living in a nightmare world where the many rule the few.

The frosted earth is bathed in light, and then darkness once more, as the clouds whisper across the skies and shield the moon from the prison below. Valjean’s face is cast in harsh shadow as he approaches.

“Here he is,” one of the convicts says to Valjean, “here is Javert, just as you asked. What should we do with him?”

“Strip the Gypsy of his uniform,” Valjean orders. “I will deal with him.”

The convicts descend upon him. Javert has never known fear like this, as cold knives cut through his clothes and cross ungently over his skin. When they are finished, not even his drawers have been spared, and is left defenseless and nude in the frigid fall air in only his boots and the irons on his wrists. Blood slides across skin from the myriad cuts the convicts left upon him during their cruel ministrations. Javert wonders whether it would be more or less shameful to attempt to shield his nakedness with his wings.

“And now?” someone asks.

“Now,” Valjean says, “we will deliver justice.”

The convict’s eyes are glittering, and in them Javert sees a stranger: a beast named 24601. It is not Jean Valjean. It is not the brutal yet amused man that had been pinned to him on the ship. It is not a leader or a thief or a protector that he sees.

It is a killer.

Javert’s wings press tightly against his back, as if seeking to crawl back beneath his skin. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the small and huddled group of captured guards watching fearfully.

“And Javert,” 24601 continues, “you have always been a great admirer of justice, have you not?”

He stares across the distance between them and suppresses a shiver. If he is not killed by these men, it will be by the cold. He has nothing to lose. It might be better to goad them into action than to stay silent, but he has little interest in responding to 24601’s mockery.

The convict prowls around him, still speaking: “You love this institution that keeps us chained like dogs. You  _ worship  _ it. All you want is for justice to be done. Am I correct? Answer me!”

Someone kicks Javert in the back of the leg, narrowly avoiding his wing, and he drops to his knees in cold mud. 24601 stops before him, and Javert, for the first time, must lift his face to meet the other man’s eyes.

“Yes,” he repeats dully. “Justice must be done.”

“There are two great injustices to be seen here in Toulon, and tonight, we will correct both of them. The first, the matter of our freedom, we have already accomplished. And the second…” 24601 leans in, the fetid air of a beast ghosting over his skin. “The second is an affront to God himself—that a man without love could grow wings!”

All around them, the inmates shriek and roar at the skies. Javert is forced to the ground, and kicked, and spat upon, and his face is ground into the mud. Broad and calloused hands touch his naked back, and then his wings—he feels the strength of a familiar body descend over him. His mind knows this creature to be 24601, but his wings recognize him as Valjean, and begin to stretch open accordingly and lovingly, like a lost dog celebrating the return of its master.

24601 takes one wing in both hands, sliding down to the joint, and  _ pulls. _

There is a god-awful crack and Javert screams into the mud. Cold filth seeps over his teeth and down his throat and he is  _ gagging  _ from the sheer pain. And yet having his wings broken doesn’t hurt as badly as Javert thought it would. Perhaps it is because of the one breaking them—it seems fitting, that they are both made and destroyed by the same man.

He passes out before he can feel the second wing snap.

 

* * *

 

 

The taste of mud is still thick in his mouth when he awakens. Javert’s eyes open slowly to a sky of pure white, and decides that he must be in either heaven or purgatory. Hell could never be this shade, the color of purity, but yet only hell could deliver this amount of pain.

“Monsieur,” says an aged, warm voice, and an ugly and wrinkled face appears over him. He notes the habit and veil of the nun, and returns his gaze to the ceiling. So he is still alive. Were he in hell, a nun would not be present; were he in purgatory, there could also not be a nun, because surely a holy woman would go straight to heaven. And he is in too much pain for heaven—thus, he must be alive.

“You will drink, and have some soup, and then more laudanum,” the nun says.

“No,” Javert says; or at least tries to say, but his mouth is foul and his tongue is trapped between his teeth. He manages a small groan, and then passes out once more.

 

* * *

 

 

When he next awakens, he is a little more coherent. The nun is absent from the room, and he finds himself on a peculiar sort of cot: a thin, raised cushion that digs uncomfortably into his back, keeping pressure off his wings, which hang from the rails of the bedposts in enormous slings. He feels around the flesh of his shoulders tentatively; he had been sure they were being torn off, but he finds them intact but splinted instead. Apparently, Valjean was unable to follow through with his words.

Javert shudders, thinking of the animal expression of the other man, the snarling lips and eyes of hatred. The way he had become his number alone, not even a name to bridge him to humanity.

He sleeps again, and eats, and has medicine forced down his throat. He is often too weak to protest. And he thinks, too, for he has little else to occupy him.

The nun, Sister Agnes, checks in on him periodically, and from her he learns a little of what had happened: only thirty minutes after he had fallen in the yard under Valjean’s powerful hands, the prison had been reclaimed, and he had been rescued. He had been dragged out and sent in a carriage to the nearest doctor; since his wings were splinted, he has been relocated back to the  _ bagne’s  _ small medical wing, where he has been afforded a private room due to the nature of his injuries. No one else was as wounded as he; the other guardsmen are all either dead, or beaten, or maimed, but they at least all have intact wings.

The warden, Monsieur Deschanel, visits him in the hospital two weeks later.

“Javert,” the man says, glancing at his wings. They have been covered for the sake of modesty, which had made him laugh bitterly at the time; they have become so enormous that Sister Agnes needed to drape bedsheets over them. “Are you well?”

“I would have been fit for duty a week ago, had my injuries not been in this location,” Javert admits. “I apologize deeply, Monsieur, for any trouble I have caused you. I will repay you for my time spent hospitalized—”

“Please,” M. Deschanel says, sounding pained. “Do not. You did not ask for this. I should have acted when I discovered how the prisoners were targeting you, two months ago. And yet I did not.”

“Monsieur, but I have not been on duty, you cannot expect…”

“Nevermind the matter about your pay! Good God, Javert. Any other man would have leaped at the chance for their medical fees to be waived.” The warden huffs, and then leans forward. “But about the riot. You must tell me, did you see the face of the man who did this to you?”

Javert hesitates.

“If you know who it was, please tell me. Many were killed during the prison’s reclaiming, and the rest were punished accordingly. But not everything is accounted for. We still are looking for the man who killed the guardsman Paquin, and no one seems to know who broke your wings—and if any do, they will not say.”

Javert casts around for an explanation, but cannot find any words. He settles upon a simple, “I cannot say,” and then followed by, “It was very dark.”

Two separate statements, both true—he cannot say, he cannot betray Valjean, and it was, in fact, very dark. But the warden will think something else.

“I understand.” M. Deschanel sighs.

“Although, there is something else—you said that prisoners were killed? Do you recall… you may not know the name, but Prisoner 24601. A man by the name of Jean Valjean. Do you know if he still lives?”

“Why, yes. He was one of the first men I questioned. He refused to tell me anything, though I believe he knows the identity of the man who harmed you.” The warden studies him intently. “Why do you ask?”

“If he is to be punished… I would ask that you practice restraint. He had the opportunity to kill me himself, and he did not take it.”

Valjean, when he had spoken as 24601, had been correct when he said that Javert was a man of justice, and Javert would prove himself to be. This is not mercy. This is not affection, and it is not a lie. Whatever Javert had felt for Valjean—it is all burnt away.

His clothes had been cut off, he had been mocked, he had been shamed: but the simple fact is that the only thing Valjean had harmed were his wings. And those… those had always been Valjean’s to begin with.

“Very well,” M. Deschanel accepts. “There is one more matter for us to discuss. That of your transfer.”

“My transfer, Monsieur?” He feels his face grow pale. “I have told you, I will pay back everything that the  _ bagne  _ has spent upon my recovery—only, please do not—”

“Calm yourself!” M. Deschanel presses a hand onto Javert’s chest to keep him in place, and he slumps back against the oft-cursed cushion that digs into his spine. “You are not losing your position, you are being promoted. I wrote to a former colleague of mine, Monsieur Chabouillet. He will take you in as an inspector, in Paris. I have given him my word that you are a hard-working and honest man.”

Javert feels dizzy. All his adult life has been spent at Toulon, and all his childhood, in the women’s prison nearby. He knows nothing but the  _ bagne.  _ It has been his home and a sort of peculiar comfort in its familiarity. And now he is to be removed from it? Cast aside because of injuries that he could not avoid, ones that he gained in the line of duty?

“Do not look so downcast. This is a good opportunity for you. Paris is a good place to work. You will be well-paid, and I trust M. Chabouillet to show patience with you. By all rights, you should have been promoted long ago.”

“...Thank you, Monsieur,” Javert says at last. He doesn’t mean it, but it seems to be the right thing to say.

Deschanel appears satisfied with the sentiment. “Very good. Now, I will take my leave. The nurse will give you a letter from Chabouillet with details in a few days. Be well, Javert.”

The warden is gone before he can return so much as a  _ bonne nuit.  _ Javert looks up at the ceiling for many moments, lost in thought.  _ Paris.  _ It is a week’s travel from Toulon. It is unlikely that he will ever see Valjean again.

He should make peace with this. Even though he grew wings for the other man, it means little. Most people do not marry their first love; it is fine. He will continue on with his life, and do his best to become the greatest Inspector in France, now that he can no longer be the greatest guardsman. He will devote his life to his work once more. Perhaps he will even fall in love again, and this time with someone more proper. Law-abiding.

It is fine.

Javert closes his eyes against the white, and sleeps.

 

 

 


	2. Interlude: Manoury de Aurand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had neglected to mention it in Chapter 1, but a HUGE thank you to [TheLifeOfEmm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLifeOfEmm/pseuds/TheLifeOfEmm) for beta-ing my Les Mis fics! And also for encouraging me, and letting me use them as a sounding board. They have been monstrously helpful.
> 
> If you have not read their fics, please check out [Our Manager Must Learn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3372764/chapters/7376768), a Phantom of the Opera crossover which literally makes me scream every time I think about it, or [A Dead Heart Still Breaks](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16473965/chapters/38580428), which is just as good and also makes me flail wildly and sob on the carpet. They are both great, just in different ways. If you belong to the Sewers and ask me about it, I can spam you with a whole bunch of meme faces about my exact feelings towards these two fics. Either way, they're super good.

 

Barthélemy Manoury de Aurand, medical doctor and philosopher, prides himself upon being the leading expert in all things—regardless of his level of knowledge in the respective area. However, his opinions are respected, no matter the subject, for not only is he loud, charismatic, and wealthy, but his guesses are known to be close to truth. Behind the jovial and overbearing personality lies a keen and discerning mind focused more on fact than one might believe, despite his proclivity for conjecture.

And yet, he finds himself quite over his head during the dinner party of a young and popular Comtessa.

“I am writing a book,” he says loudly (and after too many glasses of wine), “about wings.”

“Wings!” one of the ladies exclaims. “How improper!”

“How  _ daring,”  _ says another.

“Tell us, Doctor,” another young lady says, “what will your focus be on? Surely you don’t want to sully your reputation by writing the sort of dissertation any man could get from a mere fortune-teller.”

“Of course not,” he says, and swirls the fine red he’s currently working through. “It will be a scientific work only—a step back from the biased lens of society. A modern piece, featuring studies and excluding all fanciful tales and hearsay that is bandied about so much. No tales or romanticization.”

“Why am I not surprised that you would remove romance from the only truly romantic thing in this world, Barthélemy?” the Comtessa asks dryly.

“It must be done, my good lady, for the betterment of society. Just think—if I could prove that something such as size is…is…”

He flounders for a bit, having no idea of what he might say, and then latches onto the first connection that his mind makes—the very thing that has caused his conjectures to become so revered. The ladies watch him with bated breath, waiting to see if he will continue walking across this verbal tightrope he has constructed, or if he will fall to his own shame.

“...that something such as size is based not upon a person’s capacity to love, and instead upon their _environment,_ then can you imagine how that might change the world in which we live?”

The ladies exchange glances; some of them are smiling, others baffled by the direction the handsome doctor has taken.

“Such as you, Comtessa,” the doctor says, and the smiles turn to expressions of repugnance and shock. He has taken this too far, in trying to make a point. A bit of coarseness might be tolerated amongst friends, but only in the abstract. Wings are rarely spoken of, and certainly not in mixed company—the ladies are quite liberal in that they had allowed him to go thus far. To think, a man speaking of intimate appendages amongst unmarried women, some of them many years his junior… but so much worse, to remark upon the features of a noblewoman!

“Doctor, perhaps you’ve had enough…”

He continues heedlessly. “Your wingspan is small indeed. Six inches?”

The Comtessa’s face is stony. “Five.”

“Five, then. And surely you have heard whispers: that you are mean-spirited, or small-minded, or unable to love at all, merely because yours are smaller than average. And yet your wings are pure white, indicating a childhood love—my friends, could it not be that wings are a reflection of body mass? Could it not be a sign of environment, that certain factors in the Comtessa’s life may have resulted in such a thing? Could a small size not be indicative of a gentleness of spirit and not cruelty?” Barthélemy finishes his glass of wine. “I will seek to prove these things. Coloration may have an impact; I do not know for certain. But size? It is another matter entirely. Things have been said for generations that have been proven false in years past. It is the nineteenth century. We are in the age of science. It is upon ourselves to bring about the betterment of mankind!”

The ladies appear to have mostly recovered from Barthélemy’s outburst, and the Comtessa is looking intrigued despite the doctor’s faux pas.

“I should like to read your book, Barthélemy, when it is finished. Do keep me updated.”

And then he is served another glass, and wakes up some hours later having entirely forgotten the conversation.

 

* * *

 

It is around three weeks later that the doctor receives a stern letter from the Comtessa, berating him for his “undisciplined actions” and having “nothing to show for his boastful remarks”. The evening returns to him in jagged pieces and a fresh stab of horror as he recalls the promises he had made.

He is left, quite literally, scrambling. Within six hours of frenzied writing, he has multiple theses, a few potential sources to follow up with, and an entire list of all common prejudices that he hopes to disprove. He writes back to the Comtessa,  _ My apologies, good lady. My work is still in its earliest stages, as it is a delicate matter. However, I have a source that I will be following up with shortly that will do wonders for the direction of my book. _

There is, of course, no source. Barthélemy takes to the streets for the rest of the day in hopes of finding one. He looks closely at wings, large and small, and begins to put his artistry to use in drawing the various appendages he has seen throughout the day.

It makes him glad, for once, that despite his wealth he had refused to hire a cleaner. Surely his reputation would have been all the more destroyed had word gotten out about the lewd portraits he has been sketching!

His hands ache, and he constantly has inkstains on his sleeves. But he cannot rest—he regrets ever opening his mouth around the Comtessa. If he cannot deliver on his promise, he might as well leave Paris for good.

Enough time passes for the good lady to return his letter, and this one is just as coldly-written. The doctor scoffs at the tone. Here he has attempted to fix his errors, and the Comtessa is having none of it!

“Damned entitled aristocracy,” he mutters, pulling on his coat, and decides that if he cannot find anything notable today, he’ll book the next ship to England he can find.

 

* * *

 

As luck has it,  Barthélemy is sulking, moodily tearing off pieces of baguette with his teeth and glaring at the ground, when he catches sight of a black cloak sweeping by. It’s an unusual sight (even in France) for someone to have a shimmering cape of that size— _what material is that, anyways?_ when he looks up, and up, and realizes two things:

This man is one of the tallest he has seen, and also,  _ that is not a cloak, de Aurand, you fool, those are wings! _

He leaps to his feet and abandons the baguette upon the bench he has just vacated. Already the man is passing through the crowd, but Barthélemy is fortunate in that the man is tall enough to stand above all the rest.

“Monsieur!” he cries, elbowing aside a portly gentleman. “Monsieur, wait!”

He notes the hat, and shouts again, “Monsieur le Inspector! Please wait!”

The man turns at this, and Barthélemy draws short at the sight of him: dark whiskers, thin lips pulled into an unconscious sneer, and cold eyes that seem to pierce right through him. All at once Barthélemy feels naked. He feels a certainty that this terrifying Inspector must be able to read his every sin and vice tattooed upon his chest.

_ This man is a lush,  _ it will say,  _ and a fool. He has too much money that he spends on ignoble pursuits. _

It is a short sentence but one that he feels keenly. He wonders if this is what it must be like to stand before Judgement.

“Yes?” the Inspector asks. “What is it? Speak quickly. I have a meeting I must attend with the prefecture.”

“Allow me to walk with you,” Barthélemy says eagerly, and the Inspector tips his head in agreement.

“Monsieur,” the doctor says at last, when he feels he has properly recovered from having his soul flayed open, “Forgive me for my impertinence, but I am a scholar. A medical doctor and a philosopher, writing a book.”

The Inspector hums.

“About wings,” he adds, and the Inspector’s face becomes even more withdrawn.

“I should have known,” he says caustically. “Very well, ask your questions.”

“I was wondering, actually, if I might buy a few hours of your time—I have so many things to ask you! Could I have you meet me at Rue de—”

“No,” the Inspector says shortly.

Barthélemy falters. “No?”

“I am not answering questions about my personal life. I am an Inspector, Monsieur, and my background is not for the prying eyes of the public. To answer questions about something so delicate…” He shakes his head. “No, Monsieur, I cannot. Good day.”

“Please!” Barthélemy cries. “Just an hour’s worth of your time—one hundred francs!”

“No.”

“Two hundred, then!”

“Monsieur…”

“Three hundred, and an additional two hundred if you allow me to draw your portrait!”

The Inspector stills, stopping dead in the middle of the street, and Barthélemy holds his breath in sickened anticipation. He does not, in fact, have five hundred francs to his name; although he is a medical doctor, he is not practicing, and his finances come in a monthly stipend that his uncle pays to him.

_ Perhaps I can ask for an advance,  _ he thinks wildly,  _ or maybe I might borrow some from Madame Leclère from next door. _

The Inspector sighs. “I see that you are serious in your pursuit of knowledge. Very well, Monsieur, I will tell you what I can. But I will not sit for a portrait. I may need to disguise myself at some point. If my likeness appears in a dissertation, then criminals in all of France would recognize me at once.”

Barthélemy wonders at this for a moment; surely he cannot be serious? The size of his wings alone would set him apart and make him terribly memorable. But, no matter. He hurries after the Inspector.

“For your information,” the Inspector says as dispassionately as he might comment upon the weather, “my wingspan is eighteen feet. They grew when I was thirty-two years old and continued to develop for seven months. I… well, they may still be growing. I cannot say.”

Barthélemy risks a quick look at the man’s wings. The feathers are approaching his ankles. “There isn’t much more room for them to grow, Monsieur. Surely they will stop soon? What will you do if they do not?”

“Clip them, of course.”

The doctor flinches. His own wings, a pale beige and a perfectly normal length of fifty-three inches across, shudder at the thought. “But that would be criminal!”

The Inspector lets out a low laugh. “Perhaps.”

“May I ask, who did you grow them for?”

“I cannot give details, Monsieur,” the Inspector says, “but it was a man, and he was… improper.”

Barthélemy takes that in. “Did you Display for him?”

“Never.”

He considers this. People don’t always Display for their first love, but as long as the other person is unmarried, it’s generally a sort of rite of passage into adulthood. Intimate, private, beautiful, and not necessarily sexual. Children might Display for each other before approaching puberty, as love may not necessarily require attraction or lust; he has heard of people without sexual inclinations at all growing wings for another. But, in general, it is needed for proper development.

He must ask. “Were you attracted to him?”

The Inspector looks as if he might be blushing, and Barthélemy’s eyes widen in surprise at the other man’s visible embarrassment. “Terribly so.”

“I see. And you said he was improper? Was he married?”

“No, but…”

“Was it because he is another man? This wasn’t in France, was it? You do know that same-sex marriage has always been legal in nearly every district in France for—”

The Inspector blushes harder. “Yes, I know,” he snaps, and if his coloration hadn’t given  away his embarrassment, Barthélemy would have flinched at his tone. “Indeed, we met in France. That is not why he was improper. It was… well. I cannot say. But my reputation was… and is… at stake. I cannot tell you anything more.”

“Did he have wings?”

“Yes.”

“Did he grow them for you?”

“No, he had them before we met.”

“Do you think he knew they were for him?”

“Enough,” the Inspector says, and nods towards the building. “We have arrived. If you will excuse me, Monsieur, I must go: I am here for my first review. If the prefecture is pleased with my work in Paris, I will remain. In which case, call upon me again if there is a matter of the law. You may know me as Inspector Javert.”

The Inspector nods politely, bows, and ascends the stairs to the Paris office without another word, leaving Barthélemy stunned in his wake. From this distance he sees what he had not before: the man’s great black wings billowing out behind him. It is not unlike a storm, following on his heels, glittering with specks of iridescent green—a crackle of lightning in black clouds.

He returns to his rooms in a daze, brimming with inspiration, and then finds himself writing one short paragraph that will determine the course of his book:  _ Wing size is based upon many Factors, not Merely the one that is so Beloved by the People. Love is not its Defining point, Though it might impact results. It is a mix of many nebulous Qualities: Age, Sex, Orientation, and Repression. _

Manoury de Aurand’s dissertation,  _ On The Matters of Wings,  _ is published ten months later, and many decades later, it will be hailed as the world’s first scientific foray into wing biology. It has many errors within, but most notably it is seen as being amongst the only publications to acknowledge the effect of psychology upon development. The section on repression—the idea that wings grow to reveal emotion that a man or woman feels they must not show in proper society—begins to change the preconceptions that society has long held.

(On the second page, just after the title, is an illustration of a nude man, wings outstretched. The book is made infamous for this image due to its crass nature, though that is certainly not its intention—the man’s expression is not one of lust, but of cold judgement. His hands are spread by his waist, his feet dangling, as if he is in the midst of holy ascension. Those who peer closely not at the wings, but at the man’s face, are struck by the disdain apparent in his features, and wonder at the incongruity of the assorted elements. And others take note of the man’s long, dark hair, a few strands of which can be seen flowing over his shoulders.)

(And if the man has any resemblance to Inspector Javert of the Paris Prefecture, then surely it is nothing but chance.)

 

 


	3. Montreuil-sur-Mer Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to the lovely [Emm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelifeofemm) for the speedy beta on this chapter!
> 
> TW ahead: please note the updated tags.

 

 

_ Thirteen years later… _

Javert finds himself to be inexplicably nervous. His hands twitch at his sides; he longs to straighten his hat once again, though he has already checked it several times. He finds himself glancing at the buttons of his uniform. Are they shined properly? Is everything in order? He has the insane desire to return home to reshine his boots. They are muddied by the streets, and it is certainly a forgivable offense, but yet he is certain that when he meets Monsieur le Maire for the first time, the other will be disappointed in his appearance.

Throughout the tour of the town, Javert had become ever more impressed by the state of Montreuil-sur-Mmer; it is far cleaner than most of the neighborhoods in Paris. Javert, in contrast, feels altogether too worldly and stained after hearing his new subordinate sing the praises of the good and holy Monsieur Madeleine. He is a man who has more money than the rest of the town and yet uses it only for its good. He gives money to orphans and supports the widows of the town by hiring them for his factory. He single-handedly renovated the chapel. He has correspondence with convents and monastic orders; he is elevated from the standing of a normal man to that of something entirely other.

“He walks above the rest,” Tetreault, the officer accompanying him, says to him. “But not in the way that a nobleman might. It’s not at all conscious. It’s like… it’s like he’s that much closer to heaven than the rest of us. A part of him is always looking up.”

Javert nods, absently polishing a button on his greatcoat with the pad of his thumb. He is building an image of Monsieur le Maire—colored under the bias of Tetreault’s praise, he envisions a being more god than man. And in his distraction, he does not hear the sound of boots on cobblestones as they are approached. Not until:

“Inspector Tetreault,” a low and warm and rich voice says, and it reverberates through the fine bones in Javert’s wings. Something strange and joyous seizes at his heart. “And you, Monsieur, must surely be our new Chief Inspector?”

Javert turns; he takes in the sight of a man just a few inches shorter than himself, white hair trimmed neatly and a matching beard, warm brown eyes. A fine waistcoat that supports a trim waist, and a coat that drapes tenderly over a broad chest. He sees the eyes go wide with shock, sees the kind face slacken in fear, but he does not  _ notice  _ it, does not take it in, because instead a queer compulsion is overtaking his entire body.

His back arches, throwing out his chest—his feet brace wider apart as though he is about to face an attack. There is a strange sensation of lightness overtaking him, and Javert thinks he must be about to float away—he thinks he must be rising up higher.

There is a gasp, and more than a few murmurs and titters from the crowd around them. Javert tries to look behind him and realizes—no, he is not floating. Instead, his wings are stretching out behind him in a relentless, seductive, inexorable Display.

Tetreault coughs into his hand, trying to hide a laugh or a blush or both. “Ah… Chief Inspector, have you met our Monsieur le Maire before?”

“No,” Javert grits out, and tries to force his wings closed. Instead, they keep opening, and before an entire street full of people. “We’ve never met.”

He is nearly too afraid to look at M. Madeleine, who is probably so disgusted and appalled by Javert’s behavior that he will surely have him fired upon the spot. But when he glances up fearfully, the other man does not look angry—red-faced and likely as embarrassed as Javert, but not angry.

Meanwhile his wings still have not finished their unveiling. He feels the tips brush the walls on either side of the street and blushes harder.  _ Of course. To make matters worse, I am blocking the entire street.  _ He wonders: would it have been better or worse to meet Monsieur le Maire in the square? Is it better to block off a whole part of town, or to have his shame made visible to yet more citizens?

Madeleine doesn’t seem to know where to look. His eyes settle on Javert’s face and then flick away; they rest for a brief moment on the underside of Javert’s wing, and then he seems to realize where he’s looking is far more indecent, as he blushes darker still.

“I beg your forgiveness, Monsieur le Maire,” Javert rasps. “I have never… I did not expect…”

“Nor I!” M. Madeleine lets out a strangled laugh. “I am, ah… honored? Er, perhaps that is the wrong word. It is good to know that I’ve made an impression, but… hm. Chief Inspector… do you know when your wings might close?”

“I do not,” he says, and wishes the earth would swallow him whole. He tries to shuffle his feet, any attempt at breaking his stance, but finds that his legs are locked into place. “I have never Displayed before, I…”

“Well… perhaps you could move somewhere more private for them to cease?”

“Yes,” Javert says, irritation spilling into his voice, “That is a fine idea. I shall simply find the nearest eighteen foot wide doorway and enter there.”

Tetreault makes another suspicious choking noise. Javert glares at him, and then mutters, “My apologies, Monsieur le Maire, I should not have been disrespectful.”

And, almost mockingly, that is when his wings move on to the next stage of their Display: they begin to pull inwards and then re-extend, turning minutely so that the light reflects against the iridescent green highlights amidst the sea of black. M. Madeleine’s attention is caught by the movement, and he hurriedly turns away as Javert’s wings go from ‘shameful and possibly forgivable’ to ‘will shortly have to arrest himself for public indecency’.

“Chief Inspector—”

“Tetreault,” Javert says through gritted teeth, “could you please clear the street?”

“I… yes, Inspector, but I will have to find another way around to disperse the people on the other side—”

_ “Go,”  _ he snaps, and Tetreault snaps to attention before realizing he’s just made eye contact with Javert in his current state. He leaves in a hurry, ushering townspeople away before slipping through an alley to reach the larger crowd at Javert’s back.

Madeleine coughs. “I will take my leave, then, Chief Inspector. Would you be so kind as to meet me in my office when you’ve recovered?”

“Of course, Monsieur,” Javert says, although he would gladly leave Montreuil-sur-Mer immediately and pretend that he had never been assigned in the first place. Watching M. Madeleine’s retreating back, he is struck with the wild impulse to resaddle his horse, ride back to Paris, and tell Chabouillet that he would rather be demoted to the lowest position available than ever return to Montreuil-sur-Mmer.

Of course, that is madness. Javert would never abandon his duty.

Behind him, he hears the descending quiet as Tetreault follows orders, rerouting townspeople to different streets and at last, voice petering off as he turns down another side street to allow Javert his privacy.

Deprived of M. le Maire, his wings slowly droop, and Javert stumbles as his muscles release their grip. He has never felt less in control of his own body; the protrusions on his back hang heavily. His mind briefly flits to the convict who had been their cause—even with him, his wings had never forced a Display upon him. It had been painful, but he had been able to control his urges.

Heaviness returns to him incrementally. His limbs are leaden and trembling. Javert shakes out his wings and shuts them fully, leaning against the wall for support. His heart is galloping.

Who is Monsieur Madeleine, to have such a profound effect upon him?

 

* * *

 

Madeleine, for his part, had recognized Javert the instant he saw him. There was something oddly familiar about the man whose back had been turned—a certain stance he thought he had seen in another lifetime, the stiff and proper carriage, the height, waves of black hair pulled into a queue. But there had not been any dread, and no terror, not until Javert turned to face him.

All at once he had been struck with unspeakable horror. Javert—stony-faced, cruel, and seemingly unchanged throughout the thirteen years that had passed since they had seen each other last—appeared to him as a specter. There before him stood not a man but a demon. Javert represented the worst and lowest points of his life, and Madeleine had been rooted into place by the certainty that this ghost had arrived to drag him back to the sinner’s pit where he surely belonged.

And then…

Madeleine, in the privacy of his office, blushes yet again.  _ A Display.  _ The unexpected seduction, and the Inspector’s subsequent embarrassment, was enough to pull him from his terror. Before him was no demon, but a man, with his own faults and fears and desires. A man, whom through some strange twist of fate, had been brought into Madeleine’s life once more.

A man whom he had harmed grievously.

Madeleine, when he was still Jean Valjean and new to the faith, had been haunted by the memory of Javert, and of the man’s last moments in the  _ bagne.  _ With his own hands, he had gripped Javert’s most intimate and holy place, and had destroyed the most precious possession a man or woman could have. He had broken his wings at the joint in hopes that they might never heal—he had tried to deprive him of his own heart, the sign that Javert gives to the world that he is human, and that he loves.

He had been consumed by rage and bitterness. Madeleine can admit to himself, looking back over a decade, that he had felt nothing but lust for Javert; and when the man had sprouted wings, he became infuriated that his favorite guard might belong to someone else. To think! that a guard of Toulon might be taken by a prisoner! It was impossible, and yet the loathsome Prisoner 24601 had desired it. Had spent years imagining it. He had watched Javert for over a decade, had watched him since he had first arrived as a fresh-faced young man of nineteen, watched him develop into a man of pride and morals.

He had wanted, and lusted, and hungered.

He had envisioned viciously claiming him, had imagined Javert’s agonized cries as he bent him over in the yard, bruising him with his strength, every thrust a punishment, taking Javert for every time he had struck him—Valjean was no stranger to the assaults that men might commit unto another, not after so many years in Toulon.

He had desired revenge for the pain Javert had inflicted; and yet not all his thoughts were evil and filled with hate. He imagined gentler things; he wondered at the ways he might pleasure him. As he labored under the merciless sun and the cruel bite of Javert’s whip, he had thought of the intimacies he might show him, too—the hours he could spend working him open with his tongue, until Javert was sobbing with desire. Filling him slowly, tenderly, pressing kisses across his face, running gentle fingers over his whiskers. He thought that his guard would look beautiful, spread beneath him, burning with the fires of ecstacy, not self-righteousness and disdain.

And how ironic, that he is here now, that he had spread his wings the instant he saw Madeleine— _ now,  _ at the only time of his life when he is unable to reciprocate.

He had not even known whether Javert still lived, after that cold night of the prison riot. He wondered at times, as he lay in the cold silence of the  _ bagne  _ at night, whether he had killed the only spot of brightness in his life.

Since breaking the other man’s wings, he had not seen him again. Had not heard a word spoken of him. It was as if he had disappeared into the freezing mud of the yard. He knew that the guards would have known of his situation, but he hadn’t dared to ask. He had been both afraid of the answer, and of the beatings that might follow if he reminded them of his sins.

Madeleine often prayed that Javert’s soul might find peace, were he dead, and were he alive, that he might be able to make amends.

_ Well, my prayers have been answered,  _ he thinks ruefully.  _ I promised the Lord that I would do all I could to make up for what has been done to him. Now I have my chance! I should be grateful to God. Whatever might happen, this is only what I have asked for, and only what the Lord has seen fit to give me. _

Madeleine, head bowed, decides that he will do whatever he can to ensure that Javert’s life is as free from turmoil and stress as possible. He will care for him, show him God’s love and grace, and take care that all the howling lust and pent-up desire of Jean Valjean stays locked far away, where the rage and jealousy of an evil man might never harm Javert again. It is, after all, very rare that a man has the opportunity to atone for his life’s biggest regret.

 

* * *

 

Roughly forty minutes later, Javert finds himself knocking on the door of the maire. Rarely has he dreaded an encounter as much as this one, but he has his duty. He would much prefer to avoid M. Madeleine for the entirety of his life, but sadly it is imperative for a mayor and his Chief Inspector to be on good terms.

“Come in,” M. le Maire calls, and Javert represses a shiver before entering.

The mayor is at the window, his back to Javert. He runs his eyes over the line of M. Madeleine’s clothing—well-fitted but concealing a musculature too developed for a gentleman—before stopping at the wings.

Javert had been thinking. During his time with the Paris prefecture, he had been able to keep track of men with criminal records: particularly that of the convict, Jean Valjean. He had been notified when Valjean was released, and again when he had broken parole nine years ago. Valjean has been missing all this time—so he had wondered, could this stately Monsieur le Maire possibly be…?

Of course not. The height is the same; both men have brown eyes, and are thick with muscle. They are the same relative age. Their wings are the same size, and their facial structure is similar as well. The wings, however, are the singular point of differentiation. Where Valjean’s wings had been a sheet of gold with the black bar running across the top, M. Madeleine’s have both features—with the singular addition of a counterpoint of white at the bottoms of each pinion, as if they had been dipped in white paint.

_Loyalty, tenderness, purity,_ he thinks, as his eyes move from the black bar to the gold sheen, and lastly to the white tips. Valjean had never been tender to him, and he had certainly not been pure. And he would never know anything of loyalty, since they had only once been on amiable terms—just the once, in the belly of the ship.

He wonders, now, if M. Madeleine might be any different; if he might look at this man who bears a resemblance to a convict, and call him friend.

His wings twitch at the thought—his public Display flashes over his eyes rapidly and he pales and flushes in measure. The urge to flee to Paris returns tenfold. Javert grasps at his coat and steps forward.

“Monsieur le Maire,” he says deferentially. “I am here to report.”

“Ah, Inspector, thank you,” M. Madeleine replies, turning; Javert catches a glimpse of the underside of his wings. Pure white. Indeed, this man could not possibly be Jean Valjean. He shoves away memories of glittering gold, and the halo that had shimmered above the rugged face of a convict.

“I trust you found your way here without issue? Good. I must—” M. Madeleine breaks off, frowning. “Your coat… are you wearing that  _ over  _ your wings?”

Javert glances away self-consciously; he adjusts his coat once more, as if that might improve its fit. He knows he must look ridiculous. His oversized wings are stuffed into his coat, neglecting the specially-tailored panels that would otherwise allow them to hang freely. Given the extra mass within the uniform, he has found himself unable to close all but two of the buttons. The shoulders and sides of his clothing bulge strangely, and below the hem, his wings trail.

“I apologize for my appearance,” he says, indicating himself. “I know that an officer must conduct himself immaculately. However, I thought an infraction of the dress code might prove better than an indiscretion of… another sort.”

Madeleine reddens, but the kind smile remains. “I cast no judgement, Inspector. But I worry: wouldn’t it be more comfortable for you to have them free?”

“It is no matter.”

“Nonsense. You can hardly report to me each day with your wings cramped.”

Privately, Javert thinks he certainly  _ can,  _ but he sketches a bow. He had not been thinking of what people would say, of the aspersions that might be cast on M. Madeleine because of a slovenly Chief Inspector. He will simply have to risk the embarrassment of his wings opening. At least in the maire, M. Madeleine will be the only one to witness his shame. “Of course, Monsieur le Maire. I apologize. My uniform will be set to rights from today forward.”

Madeleine sighs, and seems to set the issue aside. “Very well. Have you settled in at your apartment?”

“Yes,” Javert says. His luggage has been dropped off, but not unpacked. There was not much to transport: his copy of  _ The Penal Code of 1810, The Fundamental Laws of the Kingdom,  _ and a singular, rarely-touched copy of the Bible; aside from these three books, he has a trunk filled with oft-mended clothing. His sole articles of new clothes are his hat and coat, provided by the Prefecture at the time of his appointment. He doesn’t think that M. Madeleine cares about these petty details though. “Everything is satisfactory.”

“I am glad to hear it. Rue de Moulin, if I am not mistaken? Number four?”

Javert nods. M. Madeleine seems to be casting about for some additional, innocuous question; Javert can appreciate the gesture towards attempted niceties, but he’s certain that Monsieur le Maire has more important things to consider than a new and problematic Chief Inspector.

“Excuse me. My apologies, Monsieur; I had not given over my papers earlier,” he says, and hands them across the desk. M. Madeleine skims the pages, eyes fading out of focus.

It is as Javert both expected and feared: M. le Maire is bored with the particulars of Javert’s appointment. All at once the reality of his career in M-sur-m stretches before him. He will have to face day after day of this. Chief Inspectors rarely take time off work; the police must be active even on Sundays, when the rest of the townspeople rest. He will have to walk into this office every morning, exchange awkward and forced pleasantries with M. Madeleine as he averts his gaze, and then watch as the mayor’s eyes turn hazy with boredom as their conversations continue.

And meanwhile his wings will continue to ache, even as M. Madeleine’s memory of Javert’s Display fades. Javert will become nothing but a routine: an oddity, a rigid and shameful creature that M. Madeleine must face as a course of duty.

Javert’s thoughts are disrupted by M. Madeleine pushing the paperwork back across the desk.

“This all seems in order,” he says. “I must ask, though, Number Four, Rue de Moulin… The apartment is owned by Madame H é risson, is it not?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Have you made her acquaintance yet?”

“No,” Javert says, and resists the urge to step towards the door. “However, I spoke briefly to her husband. They seem like a simple, law-abiding family.”

This seems to surprise M. Madeleine, although it is a perfectly reasonable and polite observation. “Er… yes. Did you… ah… have any specific concerns regarding your position here?”

Javert recognizes this as an overture towards a polite dismissal, and gives a short bow. “Not at all, Monsieur le Maire. I believe, given the state of your town, there will be little cause for concern. However, you have my word that I will do my best to serve you.”

They make eye contact on the last four words.

“And… and, the town,” Javert stammers. M. Madeleine is blushing, and Javert can feel his face in a similar state, heat rapidly spreading across his cheeks and scorching his ears. “And… with your permission, I should report back to the station.”

“Of course,” M. Madeleine allows, and Javert flees.

 

* * *

 

 

In his years as an Inspector in the Paris Prefecture, Javert had learned to make ample use of the speed of gossip. Spies and rumormongers became his favored tools; eyes and ears within every crowd, children and beggars with a respect for the law who were courageous enough to become Javert’s informants. These downtrodden souls were far more formidable than his own pistols. With a few words, a beggar could divert a thief to a different home for an evening where police lay in wait; a woman on the street could spread false information about activity of rival gangs.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that within a few days, the entire town of Montreuil-sur-mer has heard of Javert and his Display; in fact, he is hardly even known by name. Townspeople glance at his wings and smirk knowingly. In a town where everyone knows one another, Javert feels strangely isolated. His face is unknown and rarely paid attention; the citizens know him only by the unusual size of his wings. If anything of his other features are noted or remarked upon, it is usually his whiskers, or less frequently, his glare.

Javert spends more time on the streets than within his own apartment. He believes that a dedicated police presence can only deter crime, and, given enough time, perhaps he will become less of a spectacle.

Perhaps—for it is not a certainty. Had his wings stayed still, he would have been forgotten far more quickly—instead, they have taken to unseemly and constant movement. It is as if, having spent thirteen years as modest and prone appendages, they have undergone a stage of wanton rebellion.

Javert is critically inspecting apples in the market several days later when the kind and deep voice of M. Madeleine sounds behind him.

“Ah, Inspector! How are you doing today?”

Warmth suffuses Javert’s entire body, and his wings begin to open. The apple-seller covers her mouth and turns away. Javert stares in dismay at the produce before him, and gives up on shopping for the day.

“Well,” Javert says, and clears his throat. “I am well. And yourself?”

“Very good.” To his credit, M. Madeleine only glances once at Javert’s outstretched wings before looking back at his face and smiling.

It is a marked difference from their initial interactions. Javert supposes that even the most shocking experiences can become mundane after enough exposure; more often than not, Javert’s wings spread in a Display during their conversations. He delivers his daily reports with a burning face as his wings stretch and arch—his back aches by the end of the day, underdeveloped muscles having been abused for at least a half hour every morning. Meanwhile, M. Madeleine keeps the same embarrassed but kind smile on his face, as though Javert isn’t bringing shame upon the entire town by his actions.

Javert’s body has never reacted so strongly. He can only assume it is due to his poor breeding; it is clear that he has inherited his mother’s whorish proclivities.

“Ah, Madame Laurens always has excellent produce,” M. Madeleine says, having stepped forward to Javert’s side. This has the unfortunate side effect of placing him closer to the underside of Javert’s wing. It is positively excruciating. He can feel heat radiating from M. le Maire’s body, prickling at the delicate inner feathers.

He shudders. Javert’s hand clenches in his efforts to keep from closing his wing over M. Madeleine’s shoulders, drawing him into a feathery embrace. The combination of his wayward thoughts and M. Madeleine’s proximity is nigh unbearable.

The mayor is still making conversation, ignorant of Javert’s formidable restraint. “This early in September is a bit soon for apples, but you’ve always said your trees produce best just before mid-month, if I am recalling correctly, Madame?”

Laurens bobs a quick curtsy. “Yes, Monsieur! Will you be wanting a basket today?”

Madeleine glances towards Javert. “Yes, if you please. I’ll give you twenty sous for your very best.”

The apple-seller beams as she begins to choose fruit for M. Madeleine’s basket; Javert notes that she takes a great many from the bushel behind the counter. He thinks that she must save particular specimens for favored customers. He wonders if M. Madeleine is a regular customer of hers, or if Javert’s presence alone has bestowed the mayor’s patronage.

“God bless you, Monsieur!” M. Laurens is saying. “You will have to return on Saturday! My best tree is just beginning to reach its peak. I'll save the very best of those for you!”

“You have my thanks,” M. Madeleine says, and smiles. Javert tries not to notice how his eyes crinkle up at the edges. He fails, and curses his own natural inclination to notice every detail.

Then M. Madeleine turns, and gestures towards the rest of the market. “Did you have any other shopping to do, Javert? I would like to walk you back to your apartment, but I would not like to return you prematurely.”

He hesitates. The landlady, Madame H é risson, always delivers breakfast and dinner to his room, but his own lunch must be acquired by himself. He had intended to purchase some apples for himself as well as a loaf of bread—but he would not like to stall M. Madeleine for any longer than necessary. He can purchase a baguette to consume at his desk tomorrow; it is regrettable to have to wait on the fruit, but he would rather return for those another day than waste any more of M. Madeleine’s time.

“I promise that I will not be long,” Javert says, bowing; M. Madeleine nods in response and follows at a leisurely pace.

It is an odd feeling, to walk side by side with the mayor, made further complicated by his wings. The left has fully withdrawn, and the right remains partially extended, stretched behind M. Madeleine—hovering, not quite touching, but close enough that if he were to take a half-step back—

Javert forces the thought away. It will not happen.

He wasn’t sure what M. Madeleine had intended when he approached Javert today, but as they make their way to the bakery, he is beginning to understand. As the judicial and legislative authorities of the town, they must present a unified front. Having the most active members of Montreuil-sur-mer see them together, outside of the maire, makes for a sense of partnership and wellbeing. M. Madeleine is able to double his efficiency by stopping once or twice along the way to exchange a few words with a citizen.

Madeleine offers to carry the baguette, on their way back to Rue de Moulin.

“Please, there is no need,” Javert protests as he tucks it under his arm. “You are already carrying a basket, and I have nothing. A loaf of bread will hardly burden me.”

“I would like to do something for you,” M. Madeleine replies, and the corners of his eyes crinkle up again. “You’ve already been so patient with me. I had forgotten how busy the marketplace can be on Sunday afternoons.”

“I am off-duty,” Javert begins stiffly, and shakes his head. That had sounded colder than he intended. “I mean to say, it is no matter.”

Madeleine’s smile, this time, is accompanied by a gentle squeeze to Javert’s arm—a small gesture, a friendly one. He doesn’t quite startle, but it’s a near thing—Javert is unused to being touched. He is well-aware that most people would rather avoid him.

At his questioning look, M. Madeleine says, “I had wanted to thank you for some time now.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve performed above expectation. As Sargent Tetreault may have told you when you arrived, I never wanted to become mayor; I find paperwork and legal procedure to be difficult.” M. Madeleine takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly. He has the look of a man about to confess to a crime. It is a curious expression for a gentleman. “I… I do not read well. Upon reaching adulthood, the most I could do was sign my name. It has taken me many years to learn to read and write. I never thought I could have the qualifications, and in fact I attempted to turn down the position at first because of this.”

“Yet you became mayor regardless,” Javert says, and M. Madeleine nods.

“Much of my cause for accepting the position was only to better serve the town. I prefer to be out amongst the people, talking with them and helping them when I can.” He pauses, and Javert finally sees his face unguarded, void of the veneer of distant politeness he constantly wears.

He finds himself fascinated. This new expression, which seems to have only appeared because they are speaking informally, is one of vulnerability.

This… this is different. It is beyond the stilted exchanges that take place within the maire, with that damnable desk between them, separating him from Javert's constantly-shifting wings.

“I wanted to tell you, Inspector… it is a relief to have you here. You are a just man, and you care deeply about your duty. I am thankful to be partnered with a man who cares as much about his position as I do about mine.”

“Monsieur Madeleine…” Javert begins, humbled, and finds he doesn’t quite know how to respond.

“It’s Lazare,” M. Madeleine says. “My Christian name. If you would not find it too bothersome, I would very much appreciate it if you would address me so.”

“Monsieur, I could not. It would be unseemly,” Javert argues. “You are the mayor. It is my place to serve you.”

“We are both in service of the town,” M. Madeleine answers mildly. “I will not ask too much of you—but I would like this.”

Javert’s lips thin, and the conversation trails off as they approach his apartment. He assesses their surroundings; apart from a woman sweeping her porch five buildings down, they are alone.

“Why?” he demands, his frustration spilling over into verbalization—his muscles are aching; his wing has been partially extended this entire time, very nearly curved over M. Madeleine’s shoulders, so close to contact, were it not for the few inches of air between them. They have both been ignoring it, but that does not change the fact that  _ it is there.  _ To want to touch yet be unable—Javert cannot quell this longing.

And now M. le Maire is inviting him to use his Christian name? He is walking him home from the marketplace, as if Javert is some fragile  _ grisette  _ that M. Madeleine is attempting to woo, and asks about his health—he must be forcing himself, Javert thinks wildly, to be this attentive. Surely no Chief Inspector of any town has ever dealt with such a solicitous mayor.

It goes beyond mayoral duties, and yet Javert must pretend as though it does not mean anything to him, that every little interaction they share does not cause his wings to unfurl.

“Why would you ask this of me?” Javert asks again, and his voice comes out in a low, angry rasp.

Madeleine appears surprised. “If it is not too much… I would like for us to become friends.”

Javert lets out a choked laugh, and M. Madeleine flinches at the sound. He is all too aware that M. Madeleine has never heard him do so; it is raw and ugly and unnatural, as it always is, rusted from disuse.

“Monsieur le Maire,” he says, “did you forget that I find it difficult to remain professional when I am with you?”

“Javert,” he starts, and glances once at the underside of Javert’s wing as if only now remembering that it has been on Display for this entire conversation. “I am sorry. I did not think, I…”

His wings flex. Of course.  _ Of course.  _ Javert knows that it was impossible, that M. Madeleine could not possibly mean anything by his careful attention; he is nothing if not polite, and everything has just been courtesy. Above and beyond, of course, because M. Madeleine is also a saint of the highest order. This is precisely why he has been telling himself that M. Madeleine cannot truly care, that there is nothing  _ else  _ bringing him to speak so gently with him—

He did not wish to force the situation. He did not want to hear M. Madeleine say the words.

“Good day, then, Monsieur,” Javert says coldly, and for the first time, he manages to exert his will upon his wings strongly enough that they retract. “I will see you tomorrow when I give my report.”

“Javert, wait.”

He stops. His muscles tremble.

“Your apples,” M. Madeleine says, and holds out the basket. “I had intended to give them to you.”

His face is apologetic.

Javert understands, then, and allows the mayor to press the basket into his arms. And then he goes up to his apartment and sets the baguette upon his empty table and the fruit upon his desk. Paperwork from the stationhouse is already cluttering his flat, he thinks distractedly, he really should begin to finish it before he returns on Monday morning. He is the Chief Inspector, he cannot fall behind, he has his duties, he…

Javert takes a deep breath.

_ This is better than Toulon,  _ he tells himself.  _ You do not have to worry about growing pains, or injuries from vicious criminals; Montreuil-sur-mer is far too safe of a town to house criminal elements of the variety Toulon safeguarded. _

Everything is infinitely better. At least here, he already knows the ending to this story. He will not be left in the cold mud with broken wings. His clothes will not be cut from his body. He will work, and do his duty, and M. Madeleine will smile at him, and Javert’s wings will grow strong from repeated Displays.

And Javert will continue to serve. He will capture criminals and send them away to Arras for execution; he will keep this town safe.

He will not give M. Madeleine any cause to cease smiling at him.

 

* * *

 

It has been said that Justice is blind. As a boy, Javert had imagined Her as an austere queen, made bright by an angelic presence; he had not yet seen the popular depictions of Justice, and so he had always envisioned Her as looking something like his own mother—which is to say, black-haired, dark-skinned, and with a sort of mournfulness that he could not quite understand for some years.

He can appreciate the irony now, looking back on those days, to have envisioned Justice as a Romani woman. Justice is not blind; She is anything but. The eyes of the law are critical, and gaze for longer upon those with darker skin; She must have perception to be able to recognize deceit; She must use every piece of evidence available in order to judge appropriately, and it is simple fact that certain populations are more likely to commit crimes.

Javert, being Romani himself, certainly knows that skin color does not influence personality or deceptiveness, or he would not be wearing the uniform that he does. But there are patterns. One can interpret situations in such a way that they might see certain people as more problematic than others.

And so Javert waits, and he watches the whores of Montreuil-sur-mer.

Whores, Javert thinks, are not dissimilar to rats. They are numerous. They multiply at a moment’s notice; they are stealthy and are unpleasant to the eye. Sometimes they carry a stench. But no matter where whores go, crime follows, just as disease follows after the pawprints of rats.

Perhaps they themselves do not commit crimes; Javert cannot speak for every whore. But he knows that his mother was a criminal, as was his father. Prostitutes keep with men of poor breeding and ill-repute. They pull honest folk away from hard-working wives. Often, they are found to be privy to details that they hide away from police: news of criminal activity, or smuggling, anything that a man might whisper to a mistress after time spent engaged in carnal activity.

Where whores gather, fights occur. Women accuse one another, and men strut about and posture before one another.

Javert watches, and he takes note of their numbers and faces and names. There are four women out tonight, and one man, which is not unusual. Although most customers tend to be male, France has nearly always been open towards same-sex relationships, which means that there are prostitutes of both genders that may be freely found and made of service. Their wings are covered. Wings have no place in a loveless transaction such as this, and it is to their shame that these women and the man bare their breasts and wear the red coverings of a whore upon their backs.

_ Anatole, Cecile, Gabrielle, Barbe, Sylviane,  _ Javert writes, and stops. It is beginning to rain. He closes up his notebook, places it into the inner pocket of his greatcoat, and steps beneath the eaves of the nearest building. His eyes remain on the group of whores.

He waits with them, a silent spectator from across the square, until a man comes for each of them and collects them for the evening. He notes the amount of money exchanged, taking in the bright flashes of coins as they swim through the rain, from one cold palm to another. And then he, too, walks away in the dark, as the sounds of water striking the cobblestones drown out all else that might be heard, and thin streams wash away all of the muck and refuse that the day had left behind.

 

* * *

 

That night, he dreams of Jean Valjean.

It is the first time in a great number of years that the memory of the convict has intruded upon his vivid nightscape of his subconscious. Before, he had featured strongly in every kind of dream and nightmare, ranging from the most terrifying of imaginings to the sweetest.

(The very best of these was a dream where Javert had not tried to stop Valjean, that time on the ship. Instead, he had splayed open his legs and let Valjean rut against him until they both came in their trousers. That particular part of the dream, he cannot remember clearly, and it is unimportant in respect to the rest of it. Valjean had freed them after their lovemaking, using his massive strength to stand beneath the weight of the crates. And then he had somehow unmoored the ship, setting it loose on the open sea.)

(This is the part of the dream that he remembers: the two of them, safe and alone in the belly of the ship, the scent of fresh pitch still strong in the air. Javert was curled up and warm and laying facedown in Valjean’s lap while the convict stroked his wings. He could feel every brush of calloused fingertips over the sensitive skin beneath the feathers, every breath of air against his wings. Valjean was speaking to him lovingly, although Javert can’t remember the words; he’d woken up with only the phantom sensation of a convict’s hands on his back. The recollection is so vivid that it makes him shiver to think of it even now.)

Now, with his turbulent emotions and injuries made distant by thirteen years past, it almost comes as a surprise to see Valjean within a dream. He does not think of him as often as he used to, and his recollection of Valjean’s appearance has faded into obscurity.

To see him so clearly is a shock. They are standing, of all places, in M. Madeleine’s office, where Javert has delivered his reports for the past week; Valjean is filthy and bedraggled from the  _ bagne.  _ He reeks of body odor and salt water. His beard is scraggly and unkempt; he leers at Javert.

Madeleine is nowhere to be seen.

“Get undressed,” Valjean is telling him, grinning viciously, “before he comes back.”

Javert blinks; even in a dream, he knows that this is a terrible and audacious thing to say. “Have you gone mad? Do you not see who wears chains? I do not have to listen to you; I am not at your mercy. You, Jean Valjean, will be returned to the  _ bagne  _ where you belong.”

“I may be dragged,” Valjean says, “but I will have you first.”

Javert’s heart is pounding.

“No,” he says, and reaches for his baton. Once placed around the handle, Javert finds that he cannot remove his fingers. His hand is trapped at his side. Still, he will not show weakness. He lifts his chin. “You truly  _ do  _ belong in Toulon; you have gone mad if you think that you could take me here.”

Valjean laughs, and it is low and cruel. “I could have you anywhere,” he says, and Javert flinches. “You have not forgotten me, have you? After all these years, you still think of me. And yet you spread your wings for your precious Monsieur le Maire. You’re nothing but a whore.”

“Silence,” Javert snarls. “Do not speak of him!”

The convict sneers. “I see you don’t deny it. You hunger for it, don’t you? This is your fantasy. You parade yourself around this office, you little tart, hoping that he’ll take pity on you. You want a hand on your wings, but any man’s would do. The mayor is simply convenient.”

Valjean is somehow much closer than he was a moment ago. His hand is fumbling with the buttons of Javert’s trousers, eyes intent on his prize; hot breath scorches across Javert’s chest.

“Stop,” Javert protests. His hands are still frozen, and now his legs refuse to obey him as well. Sweat beads across his collarbones.

“I will,” Valjean murmurs into Javert’s ear, “but only if you truly mean it. You want this. You want a man to hold you down and fuck you. You want me, you want Madeleine. But I’ll tell you this: you can never have him. He’s too good for the likes of a Gypsy whore.”

Valjean’s hand closes around Javert’s prick and begins to stroke. Javert lets out a choked noise from the rough treatment; Valjean’s hand is dry and calloused. The sensation is more painful than anything; he hooks his left leg around Valjean and drags him closer, so that they are pressed fully against each other.

Valjean lets out a low chuckle. “This is the best you can do: a convict. You thought you could escape me, but, Javert… you were  _ made  _ for this.”

Javert can no longer speak, lost in sensation, but at Valjean’s words, his stomach churns. He is disgusted with himself, and with his actions; he cannot stop himself. But neither can he argue. He wants to be touched, and if this is, in fact, the very best he can do, he will take it and hold on with both hands.

“You…” he gasps. “You are still going to Toulon.”

Valjean’s hand twists on the next upstroke, and Javert cries out, spending into Valjean’s hand. There is a long pause, as Javert pants from exertion and tries to remember how he ended up here, pressed up against the wall in M. Madeleine’s office—

“Lazare,” he breathes in horror.

_ No,  _ he thinks desperately, he could not have done this. Not here, not with a convict. Javert is disgusting, and sinful, he is the lowest of men—he wants  _ Lazare.  _ M. le Maire, with the kind eyes and tender soul, who is pure and sweet and nothing at all like the beast before him—

Valjean only grins, and wipes his hand down the front of Javert’s uniform, marking him with his own shame. Javert shouts, but Valjean has disappeared; he is left alone in the maire, trousers unfastened and a wet smear across his front.

_ I cannot be seen like this,  _ Javert is thinking frantically,  _ I must get rid of this before M. Madeleine returns _ —and this is when he wakes up.

 

It is just past five when Javert steps out of bed on unsteady feet. He immediately makes his way to the washbasin and splashes water across his face; the room is silent, save for the uneven sounds of a man's ragged breathing. This continues for several moments; at last, the man looks into the mirror, and sighs.

Fifteen minutes later, he has returned with hot water and begins to shave. His hands are steady. Each swipe of the razor removes what has grown in the night; within minutes, his whiskers are restored to their severe and exacting lines.

As the moments pass, the sun ascends over the horizon. The streets begin to fill with townspeople, the clatter of hooves on stone, the cheerful greetings of laborers to their fellows, and above it all, the distant songs of the plovers.

Amidst all of these, the faint light of pre-dawn strengthens into a tentative golden warmth, spilling into the apartment and across the floor. Dreams, when faced with the light of day, dissolve into nothing.

 


	4. Interlude: Jean Valjean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember to check out [Emm's](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelifeofemm) fics! They are amazingly-written and I love them. Thank you for the beta and encouragement on this chapter, Emm!

 

 

September fades away quickly. The chill of oncoming winter arrives and bites the air; as the days become dark and gloomy, as the days shorten in upon each other as though they cannot withstand so many hours amidst the freezing air, Madeleine’s fears begin to slip away in the night.

It is foolish. He knows that Javert is dangerous, that despite his guilty desire to keep Javert safe and rested as apology for all those years ago, he cannot be close to him. If Javert discovers who he really is, everything will be lost. He does not allow himself to believe his own illusions, tempting though it may be.

_ Does not  _ becomes  _ should not  _ as winter deepens and relents. December finds them in Madeleine’s sitting room in the evening, drinking tea; Javert remains stiff and uncomfortable and quiet, and Madeleine is left smiling awkwardly and making polite conversation. It is terrible and painful and the echoes of their conversation in September linger in the room.

And yet he cannot stay away.

Maybe it is cruel. (It probably is, he thinks.) Javert had all but verbalized his interest in Madeleine, had asked him for distance, and Madeleine cannot bring himself to grant it. He  _ wants  _ to spend time with the greatest threat to his own safety and identity; he wants to know him, understand him.

And Valjean, chained within his breast, rages:  _ Why Madeleine? Why not me? _

What is it, about this identity in particular, that has brought about such an effect upon Javert? The Displays have not stopped; they have become routine. Madeleine spends his mornings listening to Javert’s reports while great black wings fill the room. A word to him in public causes his wings to unfurl. Even a greeting on the street might provoke it.

Madeleine becomes complacent, and sinful. More than once, he has murmured a greeting in Javert’s ear just so that he can see the other man open his wings; but it is not the feathers he watches, but the high color in his cheeks as Javert burns with shame, unable to hide his interest.

He spends the rest of these days in prayer. Is it sinful, he wonders, to desire to be wanted? Is it so terrible to want a reminder that Javert, finally, after so many years, is Displaying for  _ him? _

He has no answers, other than that it is a sign of his fallen nature that he takes occasional pleasure in Javert’s embarrassment. Madeleine, when faced with this truth, only bows his head and prays fervently. The next day, he withdraws his accounts and buries his fortune beneath a tree. The remainder of his falsified records, which he had neglected to obtain some years back, arrive a week later.

 

* * *

 

 

January brings a deeper understanding of Javert, as they continue to spend time with each other, and Madeleine is relieved to find that the tiny portions of fury and hurt within him have grown smaller. He stops provoking reactions out of cruelty; he might give Javert a nod in the street, but does not go out of his way to cause a Display.

February dawns crisp and cold. Their meetings are now habitual. For the first time, Javert appears uninvited upon Madeleine’s doorstep with a bottle of wine. He is quiet and uncertain and still does not smile or laugh in his presence, but something tight and fraying between them breaks and falls away.

They do not immediately become close after that, but Javert seems to relax a little more when he is with Madeleine—there is no longer a sense of withdrawal. There are times, when Madeleine catches Javert looking at him, that he sees something unguarded in the other man’s face.

This is more than Javert had ever granted him before. There had  _ always  _ been distance between them, Javert’s cold facade intact even as his wings flexed open behind his back. But though his body had betrayed him, Javert had never intentionally let anything loose, had never let down his guard enough for Madeleine to see anything beneath.

This is more, because it is the first thing Javert has ever truly allowed him. Though his mouth is often hard, lips pressed severely and brows furrowed in critical dissatisfaction, Madeleine catches glimmers of warmth shining through.

He does not know why, on a chilly Monday morning, Javert flinches away when Madeleine asks him to supper at his home. They have taken to meeting regularly, always at Madeleine’s home, at least twice a week. (He would ask for more; he would ask for it all; but he cannot, he cannot.)

“Surely you have better company to keep,” Javert says quietly, and his wings strain forward momentarily. The underside of a wing catches against a bottle of ink, shifting it on the desk.

Madeleine waits for the wing to pull back before moving the bottle closer, where it may not be so easily knocked over. He pretends, momentarily, that it is warm in his hand from the brief brush of black feathers.

“Of course not,” Madeleine says, and it is true.

Javert pauses, and then says in a low voice, “My apologies, Monsieur, it is just—today is Saint Valentine’s Day.”

Madeleine blinks. “Ah.”

“I would not presume…”

“As friends, then,” Madeleine says, wishing he did not have to clarify. Oh, but if only he could say otherwise! If only he could ask for them to meet tonight as lovers; it would be so very easy to dismiss his housekeeper for the evening, to sit down with Javert and partake of a quiet meal—to be able to take Javert’s hand in his own and lead him up the stairs—

He cannot think of such things.

Javert lets out a quiet noise. “I would not wish to steal away your evening. If there is someone you would rather spend today with…”

“Not at all,” Madeleine says.

 

* * *

 

 

March arrives with bursts of warmth and torrential rain. On the few days that it is sunny, Monsieur le Maire and Monsieur le Inspecteur can be found walking through the streets together, past the market, and, occasionally, into the countryside for a single stolen hour or so. These days are rare, but the people have already become used to seeing the two together that their names are often said in conjunction.

On the days that it rains (which are frequent), the two of them retire to Madeleine’s study and debate late into the evening. Javert constantly surprises Madeleine. He is a brilliant man with a cutting tongue, and yet he is not well-read; he all but despises literature and can often be caught gazing at Madeleine’s library disdainfully. But he remembers nearly everything that he  _ has  _ read, and will quote portions of the law and Bible to Madeleine with great accuracy. It disturbs Madeleine that Javert can recite verses in that flat, toneless voice—that he knows  _ so much _ of God’s Word—and yet he holds to his authoritarian view of the Lord to such an extent that he cannot imagine any kind of mercy.

It is on one of these rainy mornings that Javert delivers his report in the Maire. Population is increasing, which Madeleine had thought would be good, but Javert’s displeasure is evident in the firm set of his mouth. Javert tells him that crime is increasing along with the population growth, and mentions that there are orphans amongst them, who steal and break windows and—

There is a scream outside the Maire, and the sound of wood cracking, and above it all, the shriek of a horse.

Madeleine doesn’t hesitate, immediately rushing towards the door, Javert right on his heels—he has left his coat inside, but it is no matter, his townspeople will surely forgive him this much.

By the time they make their way to the scene of the disturbance, a small crowd has already gathered. He takes in the scene in sharp, jagged pieces:  _ Old man Fauchelevent’s anguished and muddy face, barely glimpsed through the muck. The broken legs of the mare. The weight of the cart, pressing down upon Fauchelevent’s chest. Sargent Tetreault standing by, anxiously watching. _ A bead of sweat is running down the Sargent’s brow, and this is the singular thing that Madeleine fixates on as he waits for his racing heart to calm.

The combination of pressure and fear weighs upon him as heavily as the cart upon Fauchelevent’s breast. All at once he is back within the  _ bagne,  _ listening to screaming men, Javert’s whip flaying open his shoulders.

“Report,” Javert snaps, and Madeleine hears him distantly.

“Chief Inspector! I have sent for a jack-screw, but the nearest is with Flachot. It will be another quarter of an hour.” Tetreault pauses, taking a breath, and lets it out slowly. “But I suppose it will not matter. With all of this rain we’ve been getting, the earth has turned to nothing but mud. The cart is only going to sink further, and by then…”

Javert curses. Madeleine is drawn out of his brief moment of dread, and then he is moving. There is no time to think, just that rush of adrenaline, and shaking, animal fear. A part of him is rising up, breaking free. He sees before him a load to lift, and it is his to seize and bear, because it  _ is his, it has always been his _ —

He does not hear the cries of the citizens around him. He does not hear Javert's panicked shout; he is deaf to everything.

And finally, he is Jean Valjean.

Valjean remembers the  _ bagne  _ when Madeleine cannot, Valjean who had labored in cold mud, who had been lashed by Javert’s whip—(Javert, whose lofty gaze skewers his back once more)—and so it is Valjean who crouches beneath the cart, who braces himself into position, and  _ heaves. _

It should not be enough. He is strong, yes, but he is older; Valjean growls and snarls and his wings flare instinctively, wings too long at rest, held demure and complacent at his back. But these wings remember labor as well, and they press against the underside of the cart and flex upwards. Those fragile bones should crack beneath the pressure, but they have become heavy from the years in the  _ bagne;  _ muscle may degrade, but the bones remain firm.

He remembers, and his body remembers, and it is enough after all. This does not make it easy. His muscles tremble and strain and heave. His head feels light and it is difficult to take deep breaths but Fauchelevent is sobbing beside him and Javert’s eyes are fixed on the line of Valjean’s body, and somehow—somehow both of these things make his wings flare, and there is just enough room to drag Fauchelevent out from the mud. Myriad hands brace the cart, and then Valjean finds himself pulled forwards by a pair of fists.

He stumbles, only to find himself caught against an unyielding chest. One hand still clasps the front of his shirt; the other grips his waist, vice-like, enough that it will surely leave a bruise. Valjean does not care. This is the closest he has been to a police uniform and he  _ does not care.  _ The buttons are icy against his cheeks but the wool is warm, enough that it sinks into his skin. Black wings half-surround him, and then they are gone, and Javert is pushing him away.

He does not dare look at the expression on Javert’s face; he allows Valjean to slip away and returns to the quiet humility of Madeleine. Valjean burns with pride and possessiveness— _ he has rescued a man, he has touched Javert _ —but he forces down the feelings and adopts a gentle, embarrassed smile as the crowd cheers and presses around him. Everyone is filled with gratitude. He receives congratulations and the pleased amazement of every man and woman around him; people promise him small gifts and fresh meals and praise of every kind.

He cannot look at Javert until he is certain that his persona is firmly in place. The Inspector stands away from the crowd, beyond all else. His demeanor is rigid, his face drawn, and his wings are closed. 

Madeleine flinches.

He knows. He must know, after seeing his strength. His use of wings in labor is not unprecedented, but it is uncommon. Surely now Javert will make the connection—it is impossible that he will not. Madeleine: the mysterious gentleman with calloused hands and feeble writing, who offers nothing of his past, who takes company with none but Javert; the man with the same stature and features of Valjean, the escaped convict; it is not a difficult leap to make, not for one who had known him not so many years ago.

Indeed, with what had transpired between them, it is impossible that Javert would forget. Though they had never once discussed Javert’s time working as a guardsman in the  _ bagne,  _ it had been mentioned on a brief occasion. Madeleine has wanted to ask, to push for more information, but he could not. He has spent long nights fearing what Javert might say.

_ Do you remember me? My name was Jean Valjean. _

It burns within him. He had been consumed by fear; now he will know the truth.

Like a man on a chain, he is dragged forwards, an invisible pull, as if his legs are following the movements of another before him. Weary but steady. If Madeleine thought to check, he would find that the limp incurred in the  _ bagne  _ has returned; he moves like one carrying a great weight.

He will hear Javert’s judgement. It can wait no longer. Surely, it would be that much worse to flee. He has been defeated already, and drawing it out would be to choose infection and decay rather than the burning brightness of a cleansing flame.

He waits, and trembles, but Javert hardly seems to see him as he speaks. His words are quiet, and Madeleine must lean forward to hear.

“I did not think it possible for any man to lift such a burden,” he says.

Madeleine blinks. The words are unexpected, and it takes a few moments for him to parse the meaning. He fumbles with words, but Javert is continuing as if Madeleine had not spoken at all.

“In Toulon, I had only seen one man with such strength: a prisoner, who worked in the drydocks. He was chosen for the most ignoble of labors— forced to perform tasks that could easily be accomplished by tools or teams of horses, merely for the amusement of the guards.” Javert is not looking at Madeleine at all, he realizes. He is looking into the middle distance, and he is watching Valjean humiliate himself as guards jeer and place bets upon his strength.

“I had not thought it possible,” Javert says again, and shakes his head. “He was the strongest man in France, easily. They called him  _ le Cric.  _ But you, Monsieur le Maire…”

Madeleine is braced.

“...you are even stronger than he.”

Madeleine chokes; he cannot help himself. The sound he lets out is both guttural and baffled, between a laugh and a sigh of relief. It only serves to draw Javert’s eyes to his own, but his expression is not filled with censure or hatred or fear, only that searing gaze of intent concentration. Madeleine thinks that the longer Javert looks, the chances of him recognizing M. le Maire as Valjean will only increase; but Javert does not cry out in rage or seize him by the shirtfront, and the fear eases into amazement.

How can he not see? How is it, that this man of justice, who is able to spot a pickpocket from a hundred yards away, cannot see that Madeleine’s mask hides the convict who had broken his wings?

Javert’s wings open by a few inches, and Madeleine is filled with pity. Of course—there is one thing that may blind the most perceptive of men. He would turn his head away in shame, but Javert is still looking at him, and he finds himself quite unable to look away.

“I could not believe that a man like you might exist,” Javert is saying, “had I not seen the feat for myself. Truly remarkable, Monsieur, but you took too much danger upon yourself. Had the cart’s weight been too much for you—”

He breaks off the next words with a scowl.

“It could not,” Madeleine says. He licks his lips. His words are feeble. “I was helped by God Himself. I could not have done it any other way.”

“It should not have been possible. The cart—” He pauses, and continues again, more carefully. “The prisoner I had spoken of: he had faced a similar load in the belly of a ship, but he was unable to overcome. A man in his prime, one who was much younger than yourself. And yet—”

Madeleine blushes. He remembers the moment that Javert must be thinking of even now. That evening in the heart of the ship, the break that Valjean had agonized over with the other convicts; the pallet that had fallen upon them both.

It is true that the pallet’s contents were much lighter than the cart. It was damnably heavy, but if Valjean had cared to stand, he probably could have managed it. But the truth of the matter was that his leg hurt, and his wings were pinned. He had no desire to make himself hurt more, when help would be coming shortly, and not when he could spend his time still and quiet, and with Javert beneath his wings.

It was stolen pleasure, Madeleine knows now. A violation. He had lied so that he could spend long, sweet moments with Javert’s body pressed against his, to finally feel how they might fit together, to have a taste of sweetness within a life of pain and torment. He had grown aroused; it was impossible that he would not. The other men in the  _ bagne  _ took pleasure amongst each other, but Valjean had not, preferring to think of Javert and spend within his hand in the freezing cells, chained but longing. He could not resist temptation, could not help but dream that perhaps—perhaps something in Javert might respond, that he might deign to lower himself, that he might allow Valjean to take pleasure from him and give him pleasure in return. He had played at being trapped; it would not have been a true coupling, but if he had simply been able to rut against Javert’s thigh to completion in the darkened innards of a pitch-smeared ship, it would have been enough to last him for a lifetime.

He cannot blame Javert’s disgust and disinterest. Valjean had been a man of sin, stinking and wretched and debased, willing to go to any lengths to satiate his own lust.

He had not realized that a single moment of depraved duplicity would ensure his own safety years later: that Javert’s belief in Madeleine would be supported by Valjean’s downplayed strength from one evening of lies and shame.

“What happened?” Madeleine finds himself asking, and forces his mouth shut. Even now, Valjean’s will battles against his own, as the convict rages and demands recognition.

“To the convict?” Javert asks sharply. “Does it matter?”

_ Yes,  _ Valjean thinks.

“No,” Madeleine says. “I suppose not.”

Javert clears his throat and looks away.

There is a pause, and then he asks, tentatively, “This convict… what was his name?”

He cannot help but wonder if he remembers. Javert knew his name once, but does he still? Is he a man in Javert’s memory, or just another beast emblazoned with a number?

“Jean Valjean,” Javert whispers, and Madeleine can see how his fists clench at the name. His jaw tightens, and then he draws himself up straight. He looks at Madeleine again, and there is a wildness in his eyes, a sense of shame and fear, not unlike a frightened horse. It is such an odd expression that Madeleine cannot help but be stunned into silence. “Please, Monsieur, no more questions. I… I cannot bear to speak of the  _ bagne  _ for long.” 

Madeleine smiles gently; Valjean shrinks away from the surface in horror, silenced by Javert’s undeniable fear.  _ I have done this. I have done this.  _ He is the demon from Javert’s past, a thing of nightmares. He had expected no less, but it fills him with renewed grief and self-disgust to have been faced with it.

“Then we will not speak of it at all,” Madeleine says, and takes Javert’s arm. “Would you like to return to the maire with me? I believe I should change, and then we might continue our previous discussion?”

He knows, now; his curiosity is sated, at great cost to both himself and Javert. He resolves to never speak of anything that might remind him of the  _ bagne;  _ he will never subject his loyal Inspector and dear friend to those memories again.

He can deny Javert nothing.

 


End file.
